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The Third Circle 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


BY 

FRANK NORRIS 

AUTHOR OF “THE PIT,” “THE OCTOPUS,” ETC. 

INTRODUCTION BY 

WILL IRWIN 


NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
MCMIX 


Copyright by The Argonaut, 1891, 1894, 1895 
Copyright by The Overland Monthly, 1894 
Copyright by The San Francisco Wave, 1897 
Copyright by The Pilgrim, 1902 
Copyright by The Smart Set Publishing Co., 1902 
Copyright by The Ridgway, Thayer Co., 1902 
Copyright by McClure, Phillips & Co., 1899 
Copyright by John Lane Company, 1909 


LIBRARY Of CONGRESS! 


two Conip? 1 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 


The Third Circle 13 

The House With the Blinds 31 

Little Dramas of the Curbstone 45 

Shorty Stack, Pugilist 57 

The Strangest Thing 75 

A Reversion to Type 89 

“Boom” 103 

The Dis-Associated Charities 113 

Son of a Sheik 133 

A Defense of the Flag 147 

Toppan 163 

A Caged Lion 179 

“This Animal of a Buldy Jones” 197 

Dying Fires 213 

Grettir at Drangey 237 

The Guest of Honour 271 





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Introduction 


I T used to be my duty, as sub editor of the old 
San Francisco Wave , to “put the paper to 
bed.” We were printing a Seattle edition 
in those days of the Alaskan gold rush; and the 
last form had to be locked up on Tuesday night, 
that we might reach the news stands by Friday. 
Working short-handed, as all small weeklies do, 
we were everlastingly late with copy or illustra- 
tions or advertisements; and that Tuesday usually 
stretched itself out into Wednesday. Most often, 
indeed, the foreman and I pounded the last quoin 
into place at four or five o’clock Wednesday 
morning and went home with the milk-wagons — 
to rise at noon and start next week’s paper going. 

For Yelton, most patient and cheerful of fore- 
men, those Tuesday night sessions meant steady 
work. I, for my part, had only to confer with 
him now and then on a “Caption” or to run over 
a late proof. In the heavy intervals of waiting, 
I killed time and gained instruction by reading 
the back files of the Wave, and especially that 
[ 7 ] 


INTRODUCTION 


part of the files which preserved the early, prentice 
work of Frank Norris. 

He was a hero to us all in those days, as he 
will ever remain a heroic memory — that unique 
product of our Western soil, killed, for some hid- 
den purpose of the gods, before the time of full 
blossom. He had gone East but a year since to 
publish the earliest in his succession of rugged, 
virile novels — “Moran of the Lady Letty,” “Mc- 
Teague,” “Blix,” “A Man’s Woman,” “The Oc- 
topus,” and “The Pit.” The East was just begin- 
ning to learn that he was great; we had known it 
long before. With a special interest, then, did I, 
his humble cub successor as sub editor and sole 
staff writer, follow that prentice work of his from 
the period of his first brief sketches, through the 
period of rough, brilliant short stories hewed out 
of our life in the Port of Adventures, to the peri- 
od of that first serial which brought him into 
his own. 

It was a surpassing study of the novelist in 
the making. J. O’Hara Cosgrave, owner, editor 
and burden-bearer of the Wave, was in his editing 
more an artist than a man of business. He loved 
“good stuff”; he could not bear to delete a dis- 
tinctive piece of work just because the populace 
[ 8 ] 


IN TRODUCTION 


would not understand. Norris, then, had a free 
hand. Whatever his thought of that day, what- 
ever he had seen with the eye of his flash or the 
eye of his imagination, he might write and print. 
You began to feel him in the files of the year 1895, 
by certain distinctive sketches and fragments. 
You traced his writing week by week until the 
sketches became “Little Stories of the Pavements.” 
Then longer stories, one every week, even such 
stories as “The Third Circle,” “Miracle Joyeaux,” 
and “The House with the Blinds”; then, finally, 
a novel, written feuilleton fashion week by week — 
“Moran of the Lady Letty.” A curious circum- 
stance attended the publication of “Moran” in 
the Wave. I discovered it myself during those 
Tuesday night sessions over the files; and it illus- 
trates how this work was done. He began it in 
the last weeks of 1897, turning it out and sending 
it straight to the printer as part of his daily stint. 
The Maine was blown up February 14, 1898. In 
the later chapters of “Moran,” he introduced the 
destruction of the Maine as an incident! It was 
this serial, brought to the attention of McClure’s 
Magazine, which finally drew Frank Norris East. 

“The studio sketches of a great novelist,” Gel- 
lett Burgess has called these ventures and frag- 
[ 9 ] 


INTRODUCTION 


ments. Burgess and I, when the Wave finally 
died of too much merit, stole into the building by 
night and took away one set of old files. A harm- 
less theft of sentiment, we told ourselves; for by 
moral right they belonged to us, the sole survivors 
in San Francisco of those who had helped make 
the Wave . And, indeed, by this theft we saved 
them from the great fire of 1906. When we had 
them safe at home, we spent a night running over 
them, marveling again at those rough creations of 
blood and nerve which Norris had made out of that 
city which was the first love of his wakened intelli- 
gence, and in which, so wofully soon afterward, 
he died. 

I think that I remember them all, even now; 
not one but a name or a phrase would bring back 
to mind. Most vividly, perhaps, remains a little 
column of four sketches called “Fragments.” One 
was a scene behind the barricades during the 
Commune — a gay flaneur of a soldier playing on 
a looted piano until a bullet caught him in the 
midst of a note. Another pictured an empty hotel 
room after the guest had left. Only that; but I 
always remember it when I first enter my room in 
a hotel. A third was the nucleus for the descrip- 
tion of the “Dental Parlors” in McTeague. A 
[ 10] 


INTRODUCTION 


fourth, the most daring of all, showed a sodden 
workman coming home from his place of great 
machines. A fresh violet lay on the pavement. 
He, the primal brute in harness, picked it up. 
Dimly, the aesthetic sense woke in him. It gave 
him pleasure, a pleasure which called for some 
tribute. He put it between his great jaws and 
crushed it — the only way he knew. 

Here collected are the longest and most im- 
portant of his prentice products. Even without 
those shorter sketches whose interest is, after all, 
mainly technical, they are an incomparable study 
in the way a genius takes to find himself. It is as 
though we saw a complete collection of Rem- 
brandt’s early sketches, say — full technique and 
co-ordination not yet developed, but all the basic 
force and vision there. Admirable in themselves, 
these rough-hewn tales, they are most interesting 
when compared with the later work which the 
world knows, and when taken as a melancholy in- 
dication of that power of growth which was in 
him and which must have led, if the masters of 
fate had only spared him, to the highest achieve- 
ment in letters. 

Will Irwin. 


March, 1909. 


[11] 

















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FRANK NORRIS 




The Third Circle 


CHAPTER I 

T HERE are more things in San Francisco’s 
Chinatown than are dreamed of in Heaven 
and earth. In reality there are three parts 
of Chinatown — the part the guides show you, the 
part the guides don’t show you, and the part that 
no one ever hears of. It is with the latter part 
that this story has to do. There are a good many 
stories that might be written about this third circle 
of Chinatown, but believe me, they never will be 
written — at any rate not until the “town” has been, 
as it were, drained off from the city, as one might 
drain a noisome swamp, and we shall be able to see 
the strange, dreadful life that wallows down there 
in the lowest ooze of the place — wallows and 
grovels there in the mud and in the dark. If you 
don’t think this is true, ask some of the Chinese 
detectives (the regular squad are not to be relied 
[ i3 1 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


on), ask them to tell you the story of the Lee On 
Ting affair, or ask them what was done to old 
Wong Sam, who thought he could break up the 
trade in slave girls, or why Mr. Clarence Lowney 
(he was a clergyman from Minnesota who be- 
lieved in direct methods) is now a “dangerous” 
inmate of the State Asylum — ask them to tell you 
why Matsokura, the Japanese dentist, went back 
to his home lacking a face — ask them to tell you 
why the murderers of Little Pete will never be 
found, and ask them to tell you about the little 
slave girl, Sing Yee, or — no, on the second 
thought, don’t ask for that story. 

The tale I am to tell you now began some 
twenty years ago in a See Yup restaurant on 
Waverly Place — long since torn down — where it 
will end I do not know. I think it is still going 
on. It began when young Hillegas and Miss Ten 
Eyck (they were from the East, and engaged to 
be married) found their way into the restaurant 
of the Seventy Moons, late in the evening of a 
day in March. (It was the year after the down- 
fall of Kearney and the discomfiture of the sand- 
lotters.) 

“What a dear, quaint, curious old place!” ex- 
claimed Miss Ten Eyck. 

[14] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


She sat down on an ebony stool with its marble 
seat, and let her gloved hands fall into her lap, 
looking about her at the huge hanging lanterns, 
the gilded carven screens, the lacquer work, the 
inlay work, the coloured glass, the dwarf oak trees 
growing in Satsuma pots, the marquetry, the 
painted matting, the incense jars of brass, high 
as a man’s head, and all the grotesque jim-crackery 
of the Orient. The restaurant was deserted at 
that hour. Young Hillegas pulled up a stool 
opposite her and leaned his elbows on the table, 
pushing back his hat and fumbling for a 
cigarette. 

“Might just as well be in China itself,” he 
commented. 

“Might?” she retorted; “we are in China, Tom 
— a little bit of China dug out and transplanted 
here. Fancy all America and the Nineteenth 
Century just around the corner! Look! You 
can even see the Palace Hotel from the window. 
See out yonder, over the roof of that temple — 
the Ming Yen, isn’t it? — and I can actually make 
out Aunt Harriett’s rooms.” 

“I say, Harry (Miss Ten Eyck’s first name 
was Harriett) let’s have some tea.” 

“Tom, you’re a genius! Won’t it be fun! Of 

[i5] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

course we must have some tea. What a lark! 
And you can smoke if you want to.” 

“This is the way one ought to see places,” said 
Hillegas, as he lit a cigarette; “just nose around 
by yourself and discover things. Now, the guides 
never brought us here.” 

“No, they never did. I wonder why? Why, 
we just found it out by ourselves. It’s ours, isn’t 
it, Tom, dear, by right of discovery?” 

At that moment Hillegas was sure that Miss 
Ten Eyck was quite the most beautiful girl he 
ever remembered to have seen. There was a 
daintiness about her — a certain chic trimness in 
her smart tailor-made gown, and the least per- 
ceptible tilt of her crisp hat that gave her the 
last charm. Pretty she certainly was — the fresh, 
vigorous, healthful prettiness only seen in certain 
types of unmixed American stock. All at once 
Hillegas reached across the table, and, taking her 
hand, kissed the little crumpled round of flesh that 
showed where her glove buttoned. 

The China boy appeared to take their order, 
and while waiting for their tea, dried almonds, 
candied fruit and watermelon rinds, the pair wan- 
dered out upon the overhanging balcony and 
looked down into the darkening streets. 

[16] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

“There’s that fortune-teller again,” observed 
Hillegas, presently. “See — down there on the 
steps of the joss house?” 

“Where? Oh, yes, I see.” 

“Let’s have him up. Shall we? We’ll have 
him tell our fortunes while we’re waiting.” 

Hillegas called and beckoned, and at last got 
the fellow up into the restaurant. 

“Hoh! You’re no Chinaman,” said he, as the 
fortune-teller came into the circle of the lantern- 
light. The other showed his brown teeth. 

“Part Chinaman, part Kanaka.” 

“Kanaka?” 

“All same Honolulu. Sabe? Mother Kanaka 
lady — washum clothes for sailor peoples down 
Kaui way,” and he laughed as though it were 
a huge joke. 

“Well, say, Jim,” said Hillegas; “we want you 
to tell our fortunes. You sabe? Tell the lady’s 
fortune. Who she going to marry, for instance.” 

“No fortune — tattoo.” 

“Tattoo?” 

“Urn. All same tattoo — three, four, seven, 
plenty lil birds on lady’s arm. Hey? You want 
tattoo?” 

He drew a tattooing needle from his sleeve 

[ 1 7] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


and motioned towards Miss Ten Eyck’s arm. 

“Tattoo my arm? What an idea! But 
wouldn’t it be funny, Tom? Aunt Hattie’s sister 
came back from Honolulu with the prettiest little 
butterfly tattooed on her finger. I’ve half a mind 
to try. And it would be so awfully queer and 
original.” 

“Let him do it on your finger, then. You never 
could wear evening dress if it was on your arm.” 

“Of course. He can tattoo something as though 
it was a ring, and my marquise can hide it.” 

The Kanaka-Chinaman drew a tiny fantastic- 
looking butterfly on a bit of paper with a blue pen- 
cil, licked the drawing a couple of times, and 
wrapped it about Miss Ten Eyck’s little finger — 
the little finger of her left hand. The removal of 
the wet paper left an imprint of the drawing. 
Then he mixed his ink in a small sea-shell, dipped 
his needle, and in ten minutes had finished the tat- 
tooing of a grotesque little insect, as much butterfly 
as anything else. 

“There,” said Hillegas, when the work was done 
and the fortune-teller gone his way; “there you 
are, and it will never come out. It won’t do for 
you now to plan a little burglary, or forge a little 
check, or slay a little baby for the coral round its 
[18] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


neck, ’cause you can always be identified by that 
butterfly upon the little finger of your left hand.” 

“I’m almost sorry now I had it done. Won’t 
it ever come out? Pshaw! Anyhow I think it’s 
very chic,” said Harriett Ten Eyck. 

“I say, though!” exclaimed Hillegas, jumping 
up; ‘‘where’s our tea and cakes and things? It’s 
getting late. We can’t wait here all evening. I’ll 
go out and jolly that chap along.” 

The Chinaman to whom he had given the order 
was not to be found on that floor of the restaurant. 
Hillegas descended the stairs to the kitchen. The 
place seemed empty of life. On the ground floor, 
however, where tea and raw silk was sold, Hille- 
gas found a Chinaman figuring up accounts by 
means of little balls that slid to and fro upon rods. 
The Chinaman was a very gorgeous-looking chap 
in round horn spectacles and a costume that looked 
like a man’s nightgown, of qi ilted blue satin. 

“I say, John,” said Hillegas to this one, “I want 
some tea. You sabe? — up stairs — restaurant. 
Give China boy order — -he no come. Get plenty 
much move on. Hey?” 

The merchant turned and looked at Hillegas 
over his spectacles. 

“Ah,” he said, calmly, “I regret that you have 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


been detained. You will, no doubt, be attended 
to presently. You are a stranger in China- 
town ?” 

“Ahem! — well, yes — I — we are.” 

“Without doubt — without doubt!” murmured 
the other. 

“I suppose you are the proprietor?” ventured 
Hillegas. 

“I? Oh, no! My agents have a silk house 
here. I believe they sub-let the upper floors to the 
See Yups. By the way, we have just received a 
consignment of India silk shawls you may be 
pleased to see.” 

He spread a pile upon the counter, and selected 
one that was particularly beautiful. 

“Permit me,” he remarked gravely, “to offer you 
this as a present to your good lady.” 

Hillegas’s interest in this extraordinary Oriental 
was aroused. Here was a side of the Chinese life 
he had not seen, nor even suspected. He stayed 
for some little while talking to this man, whose 
bearing might have been that of Cicero before the 
Senate assembled, and left him with the under- 
standing to call upon him the next day at the Con- 
sulate. He returned to the restaurant to find Miss 
[20] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


Ten Eyck gone. He never saw her again. No 
white man ever did. 

* jfc * 3|c j|j % 

There is a certain friend of mine in San Fran- 
cisco who calls himself Manning. He is a Plaza 
bum — that is, he sleeps all day in the old Plaza 
(that shoal where so much human jetsom has 
been stranded), and during the night follows his 
own devices in Chinatown, one block above. 
Manning was at one time a deep-sea pearl diver 
in Oahu, and, having burst his ear drums in the 
business, can now blow smoke out of either ear. 
This accomplishment first endeared him to me, 
and latterly I found out that he knew more of 
Chinatown than is meet and right for a man to 
know. The other day I found Manning in the 
shade of the Stevenson ship, just rousing from the 
effects of a jag on undiluted gin, and told him, or 
rather recalled to him the story of Harriett Ten 
Eyck. 

“I remember,” he said, resting on an elbow and 
chewing grass. “It made a big noise at the time, 
but nothing ever came of it — nothing except a 
long row and the cutting down of one of Mr. 
Hillegas’s Chinese detectives in Gambler’s Alley. 

[21 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


The See Yups brought a chap over from Peking 
just to do the business.” 

“Hachet-man?” said I. 

“No,” answered Manning, spitting green; “he 
was a two-knife Kai-Gingh.” 

“As how?” 

“Two knives — one in each hand — cross your 
arms and then draw ’em together, right and left, 
6cissor-fashion — damn near slashed his man in two. 
He got five thousand for it. After that the de- 
tectives said they couldn’t find much of a clue.” 

“And Miss Ten Eyck was not so much as heard 
from again?” 

“No,” answered Manning, biting his finger- 
nails. “They took her to China, I guess, or may 
be up to Oregon. That sort of thing was new 
twenty years ago, and that’s why they raised such 
a row, I suppose. But there are plenty of 
women living with Chinamen now, and nobody 
thinks anything about it, and they are Canton 
Chinamen, too — lowest kind of coolies. There’s 
one of them up in St. Louis Place, just back of the 
Chinese theatre, and she’s a Sheeny. There’s a 
queer team for you — the Hebrew and the Mon- 
golian— and they’ve got a kid with red, crinkly 
hair, who’s a rubber in a Hammam bath. Yes, 
[ 22 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


it’s a queer team, and there’s three more white 
women in a slave girl joint under Ah Yee’s tan 
room. There’s where I get my opium. They can 
talk a little English even yet. Funny thing — one 
of ’em’s dumb, but if you get her drunk enough 
she’ll talk a little English to you. It’s a fact! 
I’ve seen ’em do it with her often — actually get 
her so drunk that she can talk. Tell you what,” 
added Manning, struggling to his feet, “I’m going 
up there now to get some dope. You can come 
along, and we’ll get Sadie (Sadie’s her name) we’ll 
get Sadie full, and ask her if she ever heard about 
Miss Ten Eyck. They do a big business,” said 
Manning, as we went along. “There’s Ah Yeo 
and these three women and a policeman named 
Yank. They get all the yen shee — that’s the 
cleanings of the opium pipes, you know, and make 
it into pills and smuggle it into the cons over at 
San Quentin prison by means of the trusties. 
Why, they’ll make five dollars worth of dope sell 
for thirty by the time it gets into the yard over at 
the Pen. When I was over there, I saw a chap 
knifed behind a jute mill for a pill as big as a 
pea. Ah Yee gets the stuff, the three women roll 
it into pills, and the policeman, Yank, gets it over 
to the trusties somehow. Ah Yee is independent 

[23] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


rich by now, and the policeman’s got a bank 
account.” 

“And the women?’ 

“Lord! they’re slaves — Ah Yee’s slaves! They 
get the swift kick most generally.” 

Manning and I found Sadie and her two com- 
panions four floors underneath the tan room, sitting 
cross-legged in a room about as big as a big trunk. 
I was sure they were Chinese women at first, until 
my eyes got accustomed to the darkness of the place. 
They were dressed in Chinese fashion, but I noted 
soon that their hair was brown and the bridges of 
each one’s nose was high. They were rolling pills 
from a jar of yen shee that stood in the middle of 
the floor, their fingers twinkling with a rapidity 
that was somehow horrible to see. 

Manning spoke to them briefly in Chinese while 
he lit a pipe, and two of them answered with the 
true Canton sing-song — all vowels and no con- 
sonants. 

“That one’s Sadie,” said Manning, pointing to 
the third one, who remained silent the while. 
I turned to her. She was smoking a cigar, and 
from time to time spat through her teeth man- 
fashion. She was a dreadful-looking beast of a 
woman, wrinkled like a shriveled apple, her teeth 

[24] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


quite black from nicotine, her hands bony and 
prehensile, like a hawk’s claws — but a white 
woman beyond all doubt. At first Sadie refused 
to drink, but the smell of Manning’s can of gin 
removed her objections, and in half an hour she 
was hopelessly loquacious. What effect the alcohol 
had upon the paralysed organs of her speech I 
cannot say. Sober, she was tongue-tied — drunk, 
she could emit a series of faint bird-like twitterings 
that sounded like a voice heard from the bottom 
of a well. 

“Sadie,” said Manning, blowing smoke out of 
his ears, “what makes you live with Chinamen? 
You’re a white girl. You got people somewhere. 
Why don’t you get back to them?” 

Sadie shook her head. 

“Like urn China boy better,” she said, in a voice 
so faint we had to stoop to listen. “Ah Yee’s 
pretty good to us — plenty to eat, plenty to smoke, 
and as much yen shee as we can stand. Oh, I don’t 
complain.” 

“You know you can get out of this whenever you 
want. Why don’t you make a run for it some 
day when you’re out? Cut for the Mission 
House on Sacramento street— they’ll be good to 
you there.” 


[25] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“Oh !” said Sadie, listlessly, rolling a pill between 
her stained palms, “I been here so long I guess I’m 
kind of used to it. I’ve about got out of white 
people’s ways by now. They wouldn’t let me have 
my yen shee and my cigar, and that’s about all I 
want nowadays. You can’t eat yen shee long and 
care for much else, you know. Pass that gin 
along, will you? I’m going to faint in a minute.” 

“Wait a minute,” said I, my hand on Manning’s 
arm. “How long have you been living with 
Chinamen, Sadie?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. All my life, I guess. I 
can’t remember back very far — only spots here 
and there. Where’s that gin you promised me?” 

“Only in spots?” said I; “here a little and there 
a little — is that it? Can you remember how 
you came to take up with this kind of life?” 

“Sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t,” an- 
swered Sadie. Suddenly her head rolled upon her 
shoulder, her eyes closing. Manning shook her 
roughly : 

“Let be! let be!” she exclaimed, rousing up; 
“I’m dead sleepy. Can’t you see?” 

“Wake up, and keep awake, if you can ” said 
Manning; “this gentleman wants to ask you some- 
thing.” 


[26] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“Ah ,Yee bought her from a sailor on a junk in 
the Pei Ho river,” put in one of the other women. 

“How about that, Sadie?” I asked. “Were 
you ever on a junk in a China river? Hey? Try 
and think?” 

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think 
I was. There’s lots of things I can’t explain, but 
it’s because I can’t remember far enough back.” 

“Did you ever hear of a girl named Ten Eyck — * 
Harriett Ten Eyck — who was stolen by Chinamen 
here in San Francisco a long time ago?” 

There was a long silence. Sadie looked straight 
before her, wide-eyed, the other women rolled pills 
industriously, Manning looked over my shoulder 
at the scene, still blowing smoke through his ears; 
then Sadie’s eyes began to close and her head to 
loll sideways. 

“My cigar’s gone out,” she muttered. “You 
said you’d have gin for me. Ten Eyckl Ten 
Eyck! No, I don’t remember anybody named 
that.” Her voice failed her suddenly, then she 
whispered : 

“Say, how did I get that on me?” 

She thrust out her left hand, and I saw a butter- 
fly tattooed on the little finger. 


[27] 






House JVith the Blinds 

* 











V 












The 

House With the Blinds 


I T is a thing said and signed and implicitly be- 
lieved in by the discerning few that San Fran- 
cisco is a place wherein Things can happen. 
There are some cities like this — cities that have 
come to be picturesque — that offer opportunities 
in the matter of background and local colour, 
and are full of stories and dramas and novels, writ- 
ten and unwritten. There seems to be no adequate 
explanation for this state of things, but you can’t 
go about the streets anywhere within a mile radius 
of Lotta’s fountain without realising the peculi- 
arity, just as you would realise the hopelessness of 
making anything out of Chicago, fancy a novel 
about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, 
Tennessee. There are just three big cities in the 
United States that are “story cities” — New York, 
of course, New Orleans, and best of the lot, San 
Francisco. 

[3i 1 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


Here, if you put yourself in the way of it, you 
shall see life uncloaked and bare of convention — 
the raw, naked thing, that perplexes and fascinates 
— life that involves death of the sudden and swift 
variety, the jar and shock of unleased passions, the 
friction of men foregathered from every ocean, 
and you may touch upon the edge of mysteries for 
which there is no explanation — little eddies on the 
surface of unsounded depths, sudden outflashings 
of the inexplicable — troublesome, disquieting, and 
a little fearful. 

About this “House With the Blinds” now. 

If you go far enough afield, with your face to- 
wards Telegraph Hill, beyond Chinatown, beyond 
the Barbary Coast, beyond the Mexican quarter 
and Luna’s restaurant, beyond even the tamale 
factory and the Red House, you will come at 
length to a park in a strange, unfamiliar, un- 
frequented quarter. You will know the place by 
reason of a granite stone set up there by the 
Geodetic surveyors, for some longitudinal purposes 
of their own, and by an enormous flagstaff erected 
in the center. Stockton street flanks it on one side 
and Powell on the other. It is an Italian quarter as 
much as anything else, and the Societa Alleanza 
holds dances in a big white hall hard by The 
[ 32 ] 


THE HOUSE WITH THE BLINDS 


Russian Church, with its minarets (that look for 
all the world like inverted balloons) overlook it on 
one side, and at the end of certain seaward streets 
you may see the masts and spars of wheat ships and 
the Asiatic steamers. The park lies in a valley 
between Russian and Telegraph Hills, and in 
August and early September the trades come flog- 
ging up from the bay, overwhelming one with sud- 
den, bulging gusts that strike downward, blanket- 
wise and bewildering. There are certain resi- 
dences here where, I am sure, sea-captains and sail- 
ing masters live, and on one corner is an ancient 
house with windows opening door-fashion upon a 
deep veranda, that was used as a custom office in 
Mexican times. 

I have a very good friend who is a sailing- 
master aboard the “Mary Baker ” a full-rigged 
wheat ship, a Cape Horner, and the most beautiful 
thing I ever remember to have seen. Occasion- 
ally I am invited to make a voyage with him as 
supercargo, an invitation which you may be sure 
I accept. Such an invitation came to me one day 
some four or five years ago, and I made the trip 
with him to Calcutta and return. 

The day before the “Mary Baker” cast off I had 
been aboard (she was lying in the stream off 
[ 33 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


Meigg’s wharf) attending to the stowing of my 
baggage and the appointment of my stateroom. 
The yawl put me ashore at three in the afternoon, 
and I started home via the park I have been speak- 
ing about. On my way across the park I stopped 
in front of that fool Geodetic stone, wondering 
what it might be. And while I stood there puz- 
zling about it, a nurse-maid came up and spoke to 
me. 

The story of “The House With the Blinds” 
begins here. 

The nurse-maid was most dreadfully drunk, her 
bonnet was awry, her face red and swollen, and one 
eye was blackened. She was not at all pleasant. 
In the baby carriage, which she dragged behind 
her, an overgrown infant yelled like a sabbath of 
witches. 

“Look here,” says she; “you’re a gemmleman, 
and I wantcher sh’d help me outen a fix. I’m in 
a fix, s’wat I am — a damn bad fix.” 

I got that fool stone between myself and this 
object, and listened to it pouring out an incoherent 
tirade against some man who had done it dirt, 
b’Gawd, and with whom it was incumbent I should 
fight, and she was in a fix, s’what she was, and 
could I, who was evidently a perfick gemmleman, 
[ 34 ] 


THE HOUSE WITH THE BLINDS 


oblige her with four bits? All this while the baby 
yelled till my ears sang again. Well, I gave her 
four bits to get rid of her, but she stuck to me 
yet the closer, and confided to me that she lived in 
that house over yonder, she did — the house with 
the blinds, and was nurse-maid there, so she was, 
b’Gawd. But at last I got away and fled in the 
direction of Stockton street. As I was going 
along, however, I reflected that the shrieking in- 
fant was somebody’s child, and no doubt popular 
in the house with the blinds. The parents ought 
to know that its nurse got drunk and into fixes. 
It was a duty — a dirty duty — for me to inform 
upon her. 

Much as I loathed to do so I turned towards the 
house with the blinds. It stood hard by the 
Russian Church, a huge white-painted affair, all 
the windows closely shuttered and a bit of stained 
glass in the front door — quite the most pretentious 
house in the row. I had got directly opposite, and 
was about to cross the street when, lo ! around the 
corner, marching rapidly, and with blue coats flap- 
ping, buttons and buckles flashing, came a squad 
of three, seven, nine — ten policemen. They 
marched straight upon the house with the blinds. 

I am not brilliant nor adventurous, but I have 
[ 35 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


been told that I am good, and I do strive to be 
respectable, and pay my taxes and pew rent. As 
a corollary to this, I loathed with a loathing un- 
utterable to be involved in a mess of any kind. 
The squad of policemen were about to enter the 
house with the blinds, and not for worlds would 
I have been found by them upon its steps. The 
nurse-girl might heave that shrieking infant over, 
the cliff of Telegraph Hill, it were all one with me. 
So I shrank back upon the sidewalk and watched 
what followed. 

Fifty yards from the house the squad broke into 
a run, swarmed upon the front steps, and in a 
moment were thundering upon the front door till 
the stained glass leaped in its leads and shivered 
down upon their helmets. And then, just at this 
point, occurred an incident which, though it had no 
bearing upon or connection with this yarn, is quite 
queer enough to be set down. The shutters of one 
of the top-story windows opened slowly, like the 
gills of a breathing fish, the sash raised some six 
inches with a reluctant wail, and a hand groped 
forth into the open air. On the sill of the window 
was lying a gilded Indian-club, and while I 
watched, wondering, the hand closed upon it, drew 
it under the sash, the window dropped guillotine- 
[ 36 ] 


THE HOUSE WITH THE BLINDS 


fashion, and the shutters clapped to like the shutters 
of a cuckoo clock. Why was the Indian-club lying 
on the sill? Why, in Heaven’s name, was it gilded? 
Why did the owner of that mysterious groping 
hand, seize upon it at the first intimation of 
danger? I don’t know — I never will know. But 
I do know that the thing was eldritch and uncanny, 
ghostly even, in the glare of that cheerless after- 
noon’s sun, in that barren park, with the trade 
winds thrashing up from the seaward streets. 

Suddenly the door crashed in. The policemen 
vanished inside the house. Everything fell silent 
again. I waited for perhaps fifty seconds — 
waited, watching and listening, ready for anything 
that might happen, expecting I knew not what — 
everything. 

Not more than five minutes had elapsed when 
the policemen began to reappear. They came 
slowly, and well they might, for they carried with 
them the inert bodies of six gentlemen. When I 
say carried I mean it in its most literal sense, for 
never in all my life have I seen six gentlemen so 
completely, so thoroughly, so hopelessly and help- 
lessly intoxicated. Well dressed they were, too, 
one of them even in full dress. Salvos of artillery 
could not have awakened that drunken half dozen, 
[ 37 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


and I doubt if any one of them could even have 
been racked into consciousness. 

Three hacks appeared (note that the patrol- 
wagon was conspicuously absent), the six were 
loaded upon the cushions, the word was given and 
one by one the hacks rattled down Stockton street 
and disappeared in the direction of the city. The 
captain of the squad remained behind for a few 
moments, locked the outside doors in the deserted 
shuttered house, descended the steps, and went his 
way across the park, softly whistling a quickstep. 
In time he too vanished. The park, the rows of 
houses, the windflogged streets, resumed their nor- 
mal quiet. The incident was closed. 

Or was it closed? Judge you now. Next day 
I was down upon the wharves, gripsack in hand, 
capped /and clothed for a long sea voyage. The 
“Mary Baker's ” boat was not yet come ashore, 
but the beauty lay out there in the stream, flirting 
with a bustling tug that circled about her, coughing 
uneasily at intervals. Idle sailormen, ’longshore- 
men and stevedores sat upon the stringpiece of the 
wharf, chewing slivers and spitting reflectively into 
the water. Across the intervening stretch of bay 
came the noises from the “Mary Baker's " decks — 
noises that were small and distinct, as if heard 
[ 38 ] 


THE HOUSE WITH THE BLINDS 


through a telephone, the rattle of blocks, the strain- 
ing of a windlass, the bos’n’s whistle, and once the 
noise of sawing. A white crusier sat solidly in the 
waves over by Alcatraz, and while I took note of 
her the flag was suddenly broken out and I heard 
the strains of the ship’s band. The morning was 
fine. Tamalpais climbed out of the water like a 
rousing lion. In a few hours we would be off on a 
voyage to the underside of the earth. There was a 
note of gayety in the nimble air, and one felt that 
the world was young after all, and that it was good 
to be young with her. 

A bum-boat woman came down the wharf, cor- 
pulent and round, with a roll in her walk that 
shook first one fat cheek and then the other. She 
was peddling trinlfets amongst the wharf-loungers 
— pocket combs, little round mirrors, shoestrings 
and collar-buttons. She knew them all, or at least 
was known to all of them, and in a few moments 
she was retailing to them the latest news of the 
town. Soon I caught a name or two, and on the 
instant was at some pains to listen. The bum-boat 
woman was telling the story of the house with the 
blinds : 

“Sax of um, an’ nobs ivry wan. But that bad 
wid bug-juice ! Whoo ! Niver have Oi seen the 
[ 39 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


bate I An’ divil a wan as can remimber owt for 
two days by. Bory-eyed they were; struck dumb 
an’ deef an’ dead wid whiskey and bubble-wather. 
Not a manjack av um can tell the tale, but wan av 
um used his knife cruel bad. Now which wan was 
it? Howse the coort to find out?” 

It appeared that the house with the blinds was, 
or had been, a gambling house, and what I had 
seen had been a raid. Then the rest of the story 
came out, and the mysteries began to thicken. 
That same evening, after the arrest of the six in- 
ebriates, the house had been searched. The police 
had found evidences of a drunken debauch of a 
monumental character. But they had found more. 
In a closet under the stairs the dead body of a man, 
a well dressed fellow — beyond a doubt one of the 
party — knifed to death by dreadful slashes in his 
loins and at the base of his spine in true evil hand- 
over-back fashion. 

Now this is the mystery of the house with the 
blinds. 

Beyond all doubt, one of the six drunken men 
had done the murder. Which one ? How to find 
out? So completely were they drunk that not a 
single one of them could recall anything of the 
[40] 


THE HOUSE WITH THE BLINDS 


previous twelve hours. They had come out there 
with their friend the day before. They woke from 
their orgie to learn that one of them had worried 
him to his death by means of a short palm-broad 
dagger taken from a trophy of Persian arms that 
hung over a divan. 

Whose hand had done it? Which one of them 
was the murdered? I could fancy them — I think 
I can see them now — sitting there in their cells, 
each man apart, withdrawn from his fellow-reveler, 
and each looking furtively into his fellow’s face, 
asking himself, “Was it you? Was it you? or 
was it I? Which of us, in God’s name, has done 
this thing?” 

Well, it was never known. When I came back 
to San Francisco a year or so later I asked about the 
affair of the house with the blinds, and found that 
it had been shelved with the other mysterious 
crimes. The six men had actually been “dis- 
charged for the want of evidence.” 

But for a long time the thing harassed me. 
More than once since I have gone to that windy 
park, with its quivering flagstaff and Geodetic mon- 
ument, and, sitting on a bench opposite the house, 
asked myself again and again the bootless ques- 
tions. Why had the drunken nurse-maid men- 
[4i] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


tioned the house to me in the first place? And 
why at that particular time? Why had she lied to 
me in telling me that she lived there? Why was 
that gilded Indian-club on the sill of the upper win- 
dow? And whose — here’s a point — whose was the 
hand that drew it inside the house? And then, of 
course, last of all, the ever recurrent question, 
which one of those six inebriates should have stood 
upon the drop and worn the cap — which one of 
the company had knifed his friend and bundled him 
into that closet under the stairs? Had he done it 
during the night of the orgie, or before it? Was his 
friend drunk at the time, or sober? I never could 
answer these questions, and I suppose I shall never 
know the secret of “The House With the Blinds.” 

A Greek family lives there now, and rent the 
upper story to a man who blows the organ in the 
Russian Church, and to two Japanese, who have 
a photograph gallery on Stockton street. I won- 
der to what use they have put the little closet under 
the stairs? 


[42] 


Little 

/ 

Dramas of the Curbstone 



Little 

Dramas of the Curbstone 


T HE first Little Drama had for backing the 
red brick wall of the clinic at the Medical 
Hospital, and the calcium light was the 
feeble glimmer of a new-lighted street lamp, 
though it was yet early in the evening and quite 
light. There were occasional sudden explosions of 
a northeast wind at the street corners, and at long 
intervals an empty cable-car trundled heavily past 
with a strident whirring of jostled glass windows. 
Nobody was in sight — the street was deserted. 
There was the pale red wall of the clinic, severe as 
that of a prison, the livid grey of the cement side- 
walk, and above the faint greenish blue of a windy 
sky. A door in the wall of the hospital opened, and 
a woman and a young boy came out. They were 
dressed darkly, and at once their two black figures 
detached themselves violently against the pale blue 
of the background. They made the picture. All 
[451 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


the faint tones of the wall and the sky and the grey- 
brown sidewalk focused immediately upon them. 
They came across the street to the comer upon 
which I stood, and the woman asked a direction. 
She was an old woman, and poorly dressed. The 
boy, I could see, was her son. Him I took notice 
of, for she led him to the steps of the nearest 
house and made him sit down upon the lowest one. 
She guided all his movements, and he seemed to be 
a mere figure of wax in her hands. She stood 
over him, looking at him critically, and muttering 
to herself. Then she turned to me, and her mutter- 
ing rose to a shrill, articulate plaint: 

“Ah, these fool doctors — these dirty beasts of 
medical students! They impose upon us because 
we’re poor and rob us and tell us lies.” 

Upon this I asked her what her grievance was, 
but she would not answer definitely, putting her 
chin in the air and nodding with half-shut eyes, as 
if she could say a lot about that if she chose. 

“Your son is sick?” said I. 

“Yes — or no — not sick; but he’s blind, and — 
and — he’s blind and he’s an idiot — born that way 
— blind and idiot.” 

Blind and an idiot ! Blind and an idiot ! Will 
you think of that for a moment, you with your full 
[ 46 ] 


DRAMAS OF THE CURBSTONE 


stomachs, you with your brains, you with your two 
sound eyes. Born blind and idiotic! Do you fancy 
the horror of that thing? Perhaps you cannot, nor 
perhaps could I myself have conceived of what 
it meant to be blind and an idiot had I not seen that 
woman’s son in front of the clinic, in the empty, 
windy street, where nothing stirred, and where 
there was nothing green. I looked at him as he sat 
there, tall, narrow, misshapen. His ready-made 
suit, seldom worn, but put on that day because of 
the weekly visit to the clinic, hung in stupid 
wrinkles and folds upon him. His cheap felt hat, 
clapped upon his head by his mother with as little 
unconcern as an extinguisher upon a candle, was 
wrong end foremost, so that the bow of the band 
came upon the right hand side. His hands were 
huge and white, and lay open and palm upward at 
his side, the fingers inertly lax, like those of a dis- 
carded glove, and his face 

When I looked at the face of him I know not 
what insane desire, born of an unconquerable dis- 
gust, came up in me to rush upon him and club 
him down to the pavement with my stick and batter 
in that face — that face of a blind idiot — and blot it 
out from the sight of the sun for good and all. It 
was impossible to feel pity for the wretch. I 
[47l 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


hated him because he was blind and an idiot. His 
eyes were filmy, like those of a fish, and he never 
blinked them. His mouth hung open. 

Blind and an idiot, absolute stagnation, life 
as unconscious as that of the jelly-fish, an ex- 
crescence, a parasitic fungus in the form of a man, 
a creature far below the brute. The last horror 
of the business was that he never moved; he sat 
there just as his mother had placed him, his motion- 
less, filmy eyes fixed, his jaw dropped, his hands 
open at his sides, his hat on wrong side foremost. 
He would sit like that, I knew, for hours- — for 
days, perhaps — would, if left to himself, die of 
starvation, without raising a finger. What was 
going on inside of that misshapen head — behind 
those fixed eyes? 

I had remembered the case by now. One of the 
students had told me of it. His mother brought 
him to the clinic occasionally, so that the lecturer 
might experiment upon his brain, stimulating it 
with electricity. “Heredity,” the student had 
commented, “father a degenerate, exhausted race, 
drank himself into a sanitarium.” 

While I was thinking all this the mother of the 
boy had gone on talking, her thin voice vibrant 
with complaining and vituperation. But indeed I 
[48] 


DRAMAS OF THE CURBSTONE 


could bear with it no longer, and went away. I 
left them behind me in the deserted, darkening 
street, the querulous, nagging woman and her blind, 
idiotic boy, and the last impression I have of the 
scene was her shrill voice ringing after me the oft- 
repeated words : 

“Ah, the dirty beasts of doctors — they robs us 
and impose on us and tell us lies because we’re 
poor!” 

* * * * * * 

The second Little Drama was wrought out for 
me the next day. I was sitting in the bay window 
of the club watching the world go by, when my eye 
was caught by a little group on the curbstone di- 
rectly opposite. An old woman, meanly dressed, 
and two little children, both girls, the eldest about 
ten, the youngest, say, six or seven. They had been 
coming slowly along, and the old woman had been 
leading the youngest child by the hand. Just as 
they came opposite to where I was sitting the 
younger child lurched away from the woman once 
or twice, dragging limply at her hand, then its 
knees wobbled and bent and the next moment it had 
collapsed upon the pavement. Some children will 
do this from sheer perversity and with intent to be 
carried. But it was not perversity on this child’s 
[49 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


part. The poor old woman hauled the little girl 
up to her feet, but she collapsed again at once after 
a couple of steps and sat helplessly down upon the 
sidewalk, staring vaguely about, her thumb in her 
mouth. There was something wrong with the lit- 
tle child — one could see that at half a glance. 
Some complaint, some disease of the muscles, some 
weakness of the joints, that smote upon her like 
this at inopportune moments. Again and again 
her old mother, with very painful exertion — she 
was old and weak herself — raised her to her feet, 
only that she might sink in a heap before she had 
moved a yard. The old woman’s bonnet fell off 
— a wretched, battered black bonnet, and the other 
little girl picked it up and held it while she looked 
on at her mother’s efforts with an indifference that 
could only have been bom of familiarity. Twice 
the old woman tried to carry the little girl, but her 
strength was not equal to it; indeed, the effort of 
raising the heavy child to its feet was exhausting 
her. She looked helplessly at the street cars as 
they passed, but you could see she had not enough 
money to pay even three fares. Once more she set 
her little girl upon her feet, and helped her for- 
ward half a dozen steps. And so, little by little, 
with many pauses for rest and breath, the little 
[ 50 ] 


DRAMAS OF THE CURBSTONE 


group went down the street and passed out of view, 
the little child staggering and falling as if from 
drunkenness, her sister looking on gravely, holding 
the mother’s battered bonnet, and the mother her- 
self, patient, half-exhausted, her grey hair blowing 
about her face, labouring on step by step, trying to 
appear indifferent to the crowd that passed by on 
either side, trying bravely to make light of the 
whole matter until she should reach home. As I 
watched them I thought of this woman’s husband, 
the father of this paralytic little girl, and somehow 
it was brought to me that none of them would ever 
see him again, but that he was alive for all that. 
* * * * * * 

The third Little Drama was lively, and there 

was action in it, and speech, and a curious, baffling 
mystery. On a corner near a certain bank in this 
city there is affixed to the lamp post a call-box that 
the police use to ring up for the patrol wagon. 
When an arrest is made in the neighbourhood the 
offender is brought here, the wagon called for, and 
he is conveyed to the City Prison. On the after- 
noon of the day of the second Little Drama, as 
I came near to this corner, I was aware of a crowd 
gathered about the lamp post that held the call- 
box, and between the people’s heads and over their 
[5i] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


shoulders I could see the blue helmets of a couple 
of officers. I stopped and pushed up into the inner 
circle of the crowd. The two officers had in cus- 
tody a young fellow of some eighteen or nineteen 
years. And I was surprised to find that he was 
as well dressed and as fine looking a lad as one 
would wish to see. I did not know what the charge 
was, I don’t know it now, — but the boy did not seem 
capable of any great meanness. As I got into the 
midst of the crowd, and while I was noting what 
was going forward, it struck me that the people 
about me were unusually silent — silent as people 
are who are interested and unusually observant. 
Then I saw why. The young fellow’s mother was 
there, and the Little Drama was enacting itself be- 
tween her, her son, and the officers who had him 
in charge. One of these latter had the key to the 
call-box in his hand. He had not yet rung for the 
wagon. An altercation was going on between the 
mother and the son — she entreating him to come 
home, he steadily refusing. 

“It’s up to you,” said one of the officers, at 
length; “if you don’t go home with your mother, 
I’ll call the wagon.” 

“No!” 

“Jimmy!” said the woman, and then, coming 
[ 52 ] 


DRAMAS OF THE CURBSTONE 


close to him, she spoke to him in a low voice and 
with an earnestness, an intensity, that it hurt one 
to see. 

“No l” 

“For the last time, will you come?” 

“No! No! No!” 

The officer faced about and put the key into the 
box, but the woman caught at his wrist and drew 
it away. It was a veritable situation. It should 
have occurred behind footlights and in the midst 
of painted flats and flies, but instead the city thun- 
dered about it, drays and cars went up and down in 
the street, and the people on the opposite walk 
passed with but an instant’s glance. The crowd 
was as still as an audience, watching what next 
would happen. The crisis of the Little Drama 
had arrived. 

“For the last time, will you come with me?” 

“No!” 

She let fall her hand then and turned and went 
away, crying into her handkerchief. The officer 
unlocked and opened the box, set the indicator and 
opened the switch. • A few moments later, as I 
went on up the street, I met the patrol-wagon com- 
ing up on a gallop. 

What was the trouble here? Why had that 
[ 53 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


young fellow preferred going to prison rather than 
home with his mother? What was behind it all 
I shall never know. It was a mystery — a little 
eddy in the tide of the city’s life, come and gone 
in an instant, yet reaching down to the very depths 
of those things that are not meant to be seen. 

And as I went along I wondered where was the 
father of that young fellow who was to spend his 
first night in jail, and the father of the little para- 
lytic girl, and the father of the blind idiot, and it 
seemed to me that the chief actors in these three 
Little Dramas of the Curbstone had been some- 
how left out of the programme. 


[ 54 ] 


Shorty Stack , Pugilist 





* 1 ‘ ' 

































Shorty Stack , Pugilist 


O VER at the “Big Dipper” mine a chuck- 
tender named Kelly had been in error as 
regards a box of dynamite sticks, and Iowa 
Hill had elected to give an “entertainment” for the 
benefit of his family. 

The programme, as announced upon the posters 
that were stuck up in the Post Office and on the 
door of the Odd Fellows’ Hall, was quite an affair. 
The Iowa Hill orchestra would perform, the 
livery-stable keeper would play the overture to 
“William Tell” upon his harmonica, and the town 
doctor would read a paper on “Tuberculosis in 
Cattle.” The evening was to close with a “grand 
ball.” 

Then it was discovered that a professional pugil- 
ist from the “Bay” was over in Forest Hill, and 
someone suggested that a match could be made 
between him and Shorty Stack “to enliven the 
entertainment.” Shorty Stack was a bedrock 
cleaner at the “Big Dipper,” and handy with his 
[ 57 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

fists. It was his boast that no man of his weight 
(Shorty fought at a hundred and forty) no man 
of his weight in Placer County could stand up to 
him for ten rounds, and Shorty had always made 
good this boast. Shorty knew two punches, and 
no more — a short-arm jab under the ribs with his 
right, and a left upper-cut on the point of the chin. 

The pugilist’s name was McCleaverty. He 
was an out and out dub — one of the kind who ap- 
pear in four-round exhibition bouts to keep the 
audience amused while the ‘‘event of the even- 
ing” is preparing — but he had had ring experi- 
ence, and his name had been in the sporting para- 
graphs of the San Francisco papers. The dub 
was a welter-weight and a professional, but he 
accepted the challenge of Shorty Stack’s backers 
and covered their bet of fifty dollars that he could 
not “stop” Shorty in four rounds. 

And so it came about that extra posters were 
affixed to the door of the Odd Fellows’ Hall and 
the walls of the Post Office to the effect that 
Shorty Stack, the champion of Placer County, and 
Buck McCleaverty, the Pride of Colusa, would 
appear in a genteel boxing exhibition at the enter- 
tainment given for the benefit, etc., etc. • 

Shorty had two weeks in which to train. The 
[ 58 ] 


SHORTY STACK , PUGILIST 


nature of his work in the mine had kept his mus- 
cles hard enough, so his training was largely a 
matter of dieting and boxing an imaginary foe 
with a rock in each fist. He was so vigorous in 
his exercise and in the matter of what he ate and 
drank that the day before the entertainment he had 
got himself down to a razor-edge, and was in a 
fair way of going fine. When a man gets into 
too good condition, the least little slip will spoil 
him. Shorty knew this well enough, and told him- 
self in consequence that he must be very careful. 

The night before the entertainment Shorty went 
to call on Miss Starbird. Miss Starbird was one 
of the cooks at the mine. She was a very pretty 
girl, just turned twenty, and lived with her folks 
in a cabin near the superintendent’s office, on the 
road from the mine to Iowa Hill. Her father 
was a shift boss in the mine, and her mother did 
the washing for the “office.” Shorty was recog- 
nised by the mine as her “young man.” She was 
going to the entertainment with her people, and 
promised Shorty the first “walk-around” in the 
“Grand Ball” that was to follow immediately after 
the Genteel Glove Contest. 

Shorty came into the Starbird cabin on that par- 
ticular night, his hair neatly plastered in a beauti- 
[ 59 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


ful curve over his left temple, and his pants out- 
side of his boots as a mark of esteem. He wore no 
collar, but he had encased himself in a boiled 
shirt, which could mean nothing else but mute and 
passionate love, and moreover, as a crowning trib- 
ute, he refrained from spitting. 

“How do you feel, Shorty?” asked Miss Star- 
bird. 

Shorty had always sedulously read the interviews 
with pugilists that appeared in the San Francisco 
papers immediately before their fights and knew 
how to answer. 

“I feel fit to fight the fight of my life,” he al- 
literated proudly. “I’ve trained faithfully and 
I mean to win.” 

“It ain’t a regular prize fight, is it, Shorty?” 
she enquired. “Pa said he wouldn’t take ma an’ 
me if it was. All the women folk in the camp are 
going, an’ I never heard of women at a fight, it 
ain’t genteel.” 

“Well, I d’n know,” answered Shorty, swallow- 
ing his saliva. “The committee that got the pro- 
gramme up called it a genteel boxing exhibition 
so’s to get the women folks to stay. I call it a four 
round go with a decision.” 

“My, itull be exciting!” exclaimed Miss Star- 
[ 60 ] 


SHORTY STACK , PUGILIST 

bird. “I ain’t never seen anything like it. Oh, 
Shorty, d’ye think you’ll win?” 

“I don’t think nothun about it. I know I will,” 
returned Shorty, defiantly. “If I once get in my 
left upper cut on him, huh!” and he snorted mag- 
nificently. 

Shorty stayed and talked to Miss Starbird until 
ten o’clock, then he rose to go. 

“I gotta get to bed,” he said, “I’m in training 
you see.” 

“Oh, wait a minute,” said Miss Starbird, “I 
been making some potato salad for the private 
dining of the office, you better have some; it’s the 
best I ever made.” 

“No, no,” said Shorty, stoutly, “I don’t want 
any.” 

“Hoh,” sniffed Miss Starbird airily, “you don’t 
need to have any.” 

“Well, don’t you see,” said Shorty, “I’m in 
training. I don’t dare eat any of that kinda stuff.” 

“Stuff!” exclaimed Miss Starbird, her chin in 
the air. “No one else ever called my cooking 
stuff.” 

“Well, don’t you see, don’t you see.” 

“No, I don’t see. I guess you must be ’fraid 
[ 61 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


of getting whipped if you’re so ’fraid of a little 
salad.” 

“What !” exclaimed Shorty, indignantly. “Why 
I could come into the ring from a jag and whip 
him; ’fraid! who's afraid. I’ll show you if I’m 
afraid. Let’s have your potato salad, an’ some 
beer, too. Huh ! I'll show you if I’m afraid.” 

But Miss Starbird would not immediately con- 
sent to be appeased. 

“No, you called it stuff,” she said, “an’ the 
superintendent said I was the best cook in Placer 
County.” 

But at last, as a great favour to Shorty, she re- 
lented and brought the potato salad from the 
kitchen and two bottles of beer. 

When the town doctor had finished his paper on 
“Tuberculosis in Cattle,” the chairman of the 
entertainment committee ducked under the ropes 
of the ring and announced that: “The next would 
be the event of the evening and would the gentle- 
men please stop smoking.” He went on to ex- 
plain that the ladies present might remain without 
fear and without reproach as the participants in 
the contest would appear in gymnasium tights, 
and would box with gloves and not with bare 
knuckles. 


[62] 


SHORTY STACK , PUGILIST 


“Well, don’t they always fight with gloves?” 
called a voice from the rear of the house. But 
the chairman ignored the interruption. 

The “entertainment” was held in the Odd Fel- 
lows’ Hall. Shorty’s seconds prepared him for 
the fight in a back room of the saloon, on the other 
side of the street, and towards ten o’clock one of 
the committeemen came running in to say: 

“What’s the matter? Hurry up, you fellows, 
McCleaverty’s in the ring already, and the 
crowd’s beginning to stamp.” 

Shorty rose and slipped into an overcoat. 

“All ready,” he said. 

“Now mind, Shorty,” said Billy Hicks, as he 
gathered up the sponges, fans and towels, “don’t 
mix things with him, you don’t have to knock him 
out, all you want’s the decision.” 

Next, Shorty was aware that he was sitting in 
a corner of the ring with his back against the ropes, 
and that diagonally opposite was a huge red man 
with a shaven head. There was a noisy, murmur- 
ing crowd somewhere below him, and there was a 
glare of kerosene lights over his head. 

“Buck McCleaverty, the Pride of Colusa,” 
announced the master of ceremonies, standing in 
the middle of the ring, one hand under the dub’s 

[63] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


elbow. There was a ripple of applause. Then 
the master of ceremonies came over to Shorty’s 
corner, and, taking him by the arm, conducted 
him into the middle of the ring. 

“Shorty Stack, the Champion of Placer County.” 
The house roared; Shorty ducked and grinned 
and returned to his corner. He was nervous, ex- 
cited. He had not imagined it would be exactly 
like this. There was a strangeness about it all; 
an unfamiliarity that made him uneasy. 

“Take it slow,” said Billy Hicks, kneading the 
gloves, so as to work the padding away from the 
knuckles. The gloves were laced on Shorty’s hands. 

“Up you go,” said Billy Hicks, again. “No, 
not the fight yet, shake hands first. Don’t get 
rattled.” 

Then ensued a vague interval, that seemed to 
Shorty interminable. He ihad a notion that he 
shook hands with McCleaverty, and that some 
one asked him if he would agree to hit with one 
arm free in the breakaway. He remembered a 
glare of lights, a dim vision of rows of waiting 
faces, a great murmuring noise, and he had a mo- 
mentary glimpse of someone he believed to be the 
referee, a young man in shirtsleeves and turned-up 
trousers. Then everybody seemed to be getting 
[64] 


SHORTY STACK , PUGILIST 


out of the ring and away from him, even Billy 
Hicks left him after saying something he did not 
understand. Only the referee, McCleaverty and 
himself were left inside the ropes. 

“Time!” 

Somebody, that seemed to Shorty strangely like 
himself, stepped briskly out into the middle of the 
ring, his left arm before him, his right fist clinched 
over his breast. The crowd, the glaring lights, 
the murmuring noise, all faded away. There only 
remained the creaking of rubber soles over the 
resin of the boards of the ring and the sight of 
McCleaverty’s shifting, twinkling eyes and his 
round, close-cropped head. 

“Break!” 

The referee stepped between the two men and 
Shorty realised that the two had clinched, and 
that his right forearm had been across McCleav- 
erty’s throat, his left clasping him about the 
shoulders. 

What ! Were they fighting already? This was 
the first round, of course, somebody was shouting. 

“That’s the stuff, Shorty.” 

All at once Shorty saw the flash of a red mus- 
cled arm, he threw forward his shoulder ducking 
his head behind it, the arm slid over the raised 

[65] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


shoulder and a bare and unprotected flank turned 
towards him. 

“Now,” thought Shorty. His arm shortened 
and leaped forward. There was a sudden impact. 
The shock of it jarred Shorty himself, and he 
heard McCleaverty grunt. There came a roar 
from the house. 

“Give it to him, Shorty.” 

Shorty pushed his man from him, the heel of 
his glove upon his face. He was no longer nerv- 
ous. The lights didn’t bother him. 

“I’ll knock him out yet,” he muttered to himself. 

They fiddled and feinted about the ring, watch- 
ing each other’s eyes. Shorty held his right ready. 
He told himself he would jab McCleaverty again 
on the same spot when next he gave him an open- 
ing. 

‘'Break!” 

They must have clinched again, but Shorty was 
not conscious of it. A sharp pain in his upper lip 
made him angry. His right shot forward again, 
struck home, and while the crowd roared and the 
lights began to swim again, he knew that he was 
rushing McCleaverty back, back, back, his arms 
shooting out and in like piston rods, now for an 
upper cut with his left on the — 

[ 66 ] 


SHORTY STACK , PUGILIST 


“Time!” 

Billy Hicks was talking excitedly. The crowd 
still roared. His lips pained. Someone was spurt- 
ing water over him, one of his seconds worked the 
fans like a windmill. He wondered what Miss 
Starbird thought of him now. 

“Time!” 

He barely had a chance to duck, almost double, 
while McCleaverty’ s right swished over his head. 
The dub was swinging for a knockout already. 
The round would be hot and fast. 

“Stay with um, Shorty.” 

“That’s the stuff, Shorty.” 

He must be setting the pace, the house plainly 
told him that. He stepped in again and cut loose 
with both fists. 

“Break!” 

Shorty had not clinched. Was it possible that 
McCleaverty was clinching “to avoid punishment.” 
Shorty tried again, stepping in close, his right arm 
crooked and ready. 

“Break!” 

The dub was clinching. There could be no 
doubt of that. Shorty gathered himself together 
and rushed in, upper-cutting viciously; he felt 
McCleaverty giving way before him. 

[67] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“He’s got um going.” 

There was exhilaration in the shout. Shorty 
swung right and left, his fist struck something that 
hurt him. Sure, he thought, that must have been 
a good one. He recovered, throwing out his left 
before him. Where was the dub ? not down there 
on one knee in a corner of the ring? The house 
was a pandemonium, near at hand some one was 
counting, “one — two — three — four — ” 

Billy Hicks shouted, “Come back to your cor- 
ner. When he’s up go right in to finish him. He 
ain’t knocked out yet. He’s just taking his full 
time. Swing for his chin again, you got him go- 
ing. If you can put him out, Shorty, we’ll take 
you to San Francisco.” 

“Seven — eight — nine — ’ * 

McCleaverty was up again. Shorty rushed in. 
Something caught him a fearful jar in the pit of 
the stomach. He was sick in an instant, racked 
with nausea. The lights began to dance. 

“Time!” 

There was water on his face and body again, 
deliciously cool. The fan windmills swung round 
and round. “What’s the matter, what’s the mat- 
ter,” Billy Hicks was asking anxiously. 

Something was wrong. There was a lead-like 

[ 68 ] 


SHORTY STACK , PUGILIST 

weight in Shorty’s stomach, a taste of potato salad 
came to his mouth, he was sick almost to vomiting. 

“He caught you a hard one in the wind just be- 
fore the gong, did he?” said Billy Hicks. “There’s 
fight in him yet. He’s got a straight arm body 
blow you want to look out for. Don’t let up on 
him. Keep — ” 

“Time!” 

Shorty came up bravely. In his stomach there 
was a pain that made it torture to stand erect. 
Nevertheless he rushed, lashing out right and left. 
He was dizzy; before he knew it he was beating 
the air. Suddenly his chin jolted backward, and 
the lights began to spin; he was tiring rapidly, too, 
and with every second his arms grew heavier and 
heavier and his knees began to tremble more and 
more. McCleaverty gave him no rest. Shorty 
tried to clinch, but the dub sidestepped, and came 
in twice with a hard right and left over the heart. 
Shorty’s gloves seemed made of iron; he found 
time to mutter, “If I only hadn’t eaten that stuff 
last night.” 

What with the nausea and the pain, he was hard 
put to it to keep from groaning. It was the dub 
who was rushing now; Shorty felt he could not 

[69] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


support the weight of his own arms another in- 
stant. What was that on his face that was warm 
and tickled? He knew that he had just strength 
enough left for one more good blow; if he could 
only upper-cut squarely on McCleaverty’s chin it 
might suffice. 

“Break!” 

The referee thrust himself between them, but 
instantly McCleaverty closed again. Would the 
round never end? The dub swung again, missed, 
and Shorty saw his chance; he stepped in, upper- 
cutting with all the strength he could summon up. 
The lights swam again, and the roar of the crowd 
dwindled to a couple of voices. He smelt whisky. 

“Gimme that sponge.” It was Billy Hicks 
voice. “He’ll do all right now.” 

Shorty suddenly realised that he was lying on 
his back. In another second he would be counted 
out. He raised himself, but his hands touched 
a bed quilt and not the resined floor of the ring. 
He looked around him and saw that he was in 
the back room of the saloon where he had dressed. 
The fight was over. 

“Did I win?” he asked, getting on his feet. 

“Win!” exclaimed Billy Hicks. “You were 
knocked out. He put you out after you had him 

[ 70 ] 


SHORTY STACK, PUGILIST 


beaten. Oh, you’re a peach of a fighter, you are !” 
* * * * * 

Half an hour later when he had dressed, 
Shorty went over to the Hall. His lip was badly 
swollen and his chin had a funny shape, but other- 
wise he was fairly presentable. The Iowa Hill 
orchestra had just struck into the march for the 
walk around. He pushed through the crowd of 
men around the door looking for Miss Starbird. 
Just after he had passed he heard a remark and 
the laugh that followed it : 

“Quitter, oh, what a quitter!” 

Shorty turned fiercely about and would have an- 
swered, but just at that moment he caught sight 
of Miss Starbird. She had just joined the prom- 
enade or the walk around with some other man. 
He went up to her : 

“Didn’t you promise to have this walk around 
ivith me?” he said aggrievedly. 

“Well, did you think I was going to wait all 
night for you?” returned Miss Starbird. 

As she turned from him and joined the march 
Shorty’s eye fell upon her partner. 

It was McCleaverty. 




The Strangest Thing 





















$ 



The Strangest Thing 


T HE best days in the voyage from the Cape 
to Southampton are those that come imme- 
diately before and immediately after that 
upon which you cross the line, when the ship is as 
steady as a billiard table, and the ocean is as smooth 
and shiny and coloured as the mosaic floor of a 
basilica church, when the deck is covered with 
awning from stem to stern, and the resin bubbles 
out of the masts, and the thermometer in the com- 
panion-way at the entrance to the dining-saloon 
climbs higher and higher with every turn of the 
screw. Of course all the men people aboard must 
sleep on deck these nights. There is a pleasure in 
this that you will find nowhere else. At six your 
steward wakes you up with your morning cup of 
coffee, and you sit cross-legged in your pajamas on 
the skylight and drink your coffee and smoke your 
cigarettes and watch the sun shooting up over the 
rim of that polished basilica floor, and take pleas- 
[ 75 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


ure in the mere fact of your existence, and talk and 
talk and tell stories until it’s time for bath and 
breakfast. 

We came back from the Cape in The Moor, 
with a very abbreviated cabin list. Only three of 
the smaller tables in the saloon were occupied, 
and those mostly by men — diamond-brokers from 
Kimberly, gold-brokers from the Rand, the mana- 
ger of a war correspondent on a lecture tour, cut 
short by the Ashanti war, an English captain of 
twenty-two, who had been with Jameson at Kru- 
gersdorp and somehow managed to escape, an 
Australian reporter named Miller, and two or 
three others of a less distinct personality. 

Miller told the story that follows early one 
morning, sitting on the Bull board, tailor-fashion, 
and smoking pipefuls of straight perique, black as 
a nigger’s wool. We were grouped around him 
on the deck in pajamas and bath robes. It was 
half after six, the thermometer was at 70 degrees, 
The Moor cut the still water with a soothing rum- 
ble of her screw, and at intervals flushed whole 
schools of flying fish. Somehow the talk had drifted 
to the inexplicable things that we had seen, and we 
had been piecing out our experiences with some 
really beautiful lies. Captain Thatcher, the Kru- 
[ 76 ] 


THE STRANGEST THING 


gersdorp chap, held that the failure of the Jameson 
Raid was the most inexplicable thing he had ever 
experienced, but none of the rest of us could think 
of anything we had seen or heard of that did not 
have some stealthy, shadowy sort of explanation 
sneaking after it and hunting it down. 

“Well, I saw something a bit thick once,” ob- 
served Miller, pushing down the tobacco in his 
pipe bowl with the tip of a callous finger, and 
in the abrupt silence that followed we heard the 
noise of dishes from the direction of the galley. 

“It was in Johannesburg three years back, when 
I was down on me luck. I had been rooked prop- 
erly by a Welsh gaming chap who was no end of 
a bounder, and three quid was all that stood be- 
tween me and — well,” he broke in, suddenly, “I 
had three quid left. I wore down me feet walk- 
ing the streets of that bally town looking for any- 
thing that would keep me going for a while, and 
give me a chance to look around and fetch breath, 
and there was nothing, but I tell ye nothing, and I 
was fair desperate. One dye, and a filthy wet 
dye it was, too, I had gone out to the race track, 
beyond Hospital Hill, where the pony races are 
run, thinking as might be I’d find a berth, hand- 
ling ponies there, but the season was too far gone, 
[ 77 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


and they turned me awye. I came back to town 
by another road — then by the waye that fetches 
around by the Mahomedan burying-ground. Well, 
the pauper burying-ground used to be alongside 
in those dyes, and as I came up, jolly well blown, 
I tell ye, for I’d but tightened me belt by wye of 
breakfast, I saw a chap diggin’ a gryve. I was 
in a mind for gryves meself just then, so I pulled 
up and leaned over the fence and piped him off 
at his work. Then, like the geeser I’d come to be, 
I says: 

“ ‘What are ye doing there, friend?* He 
looked me over between shovelfuls a bit, and then 
says: 

“ ‘Oh, just setting out early violets;’ and that 
shut me up properly. 

“Well, I piped him digging that gryve for per- 
haps five minutes, and then, s’ help me, I asked 
him for a job. I did — I asked that gryve-digger 
for a job — I was that low. He leans his back 
against the side of the gryve and looks me over, 
then by and bye, says he : 

“ ‘All right, pardnerP 

“ ‘I’m thinking your from the Stytes,* says I. 

“ ‘Guess yes,’ he says, and goes on digging. 

“Well, we came to terms after a while. He was 
[ 78 ] 


THE STRANGEST THING 


to give me two bob a dye for helping him at his 
work, and I was to have a bunk in his ‘shack/ as 
he called it — a box of a house built of four boards, 
as I might sye, that stood just on the edge of the 
gryveyard. He was a rum ’un, was that Yankee 
chap. Over pipes that night he told me some- 
thing of himself, and do y’ know, that gryve-digger 
in the pauper burying-ground in Johannesburg, 
South Africa, was a Harvard graduate! Strike 
me straight if I don’t believe he really was. The 
man was a wreck from strong drink, but that was 
the one thing he was proud of. 

“ ‘Yes, sir,’ he’d say, over and over again, look- 
ing straight ahead of him, ‘Yes, sir, I was a Har- 
vard man once, and pulled at number five in the 
boat’ — the ’varsity boat, mind ye; and then he’d 
go on talking half to himself. ‘And now what 
am I? I’m digging gryves for hire — burying 
dead people for a living, when I ought to be dead 
meself. I am dead and buried long ago. It’s just 
the whiskey that keeps me alive, Miller,’ he would 
say; ‘when I stop that I’m done for.’ 

“The first morning I came round for work I met 
him dressed as if to go to town, and carrying a 
wickered demijohn. ‘Miller,’ he says, ‘I’m going 
into town to get this filled. You must stop here 
[ 79 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


and be ready to answer any telephone call from 
the police station.’ S’ help me if there wasn’t a 
telephone in that beastly shack. ‘If a pauper cops 
off they’ll ring you up from town and notify you 
to have the gryve ready. If I’m awye, you’ll have 
to dig it. Remember, if it’s a man, you must dig 
a six foot six hole; if it’s a woman, five feet will 
do, and if it’s a kid, three an’ half’ll be a plenty. 
S’long.’ And off he goes. 

“Strike me blind but that was a long dye, that 
first one. I’d the pauper gryves for view and 
me own thoughts for company. But along about 
noon, the Harvard graduate not showing up, I 
found a diversion. The graduate had started to 
paint the shack at one time, but had given over 
after finishing one side, but the paint pot and the 
brushes were there. I got hold of ’em and mixed 
a bit o’ paint and went the rounds of the gryves. 
Ye know how it is in a pauper burying-ground — 
no nymes at all on the headboards — naught but 
numbers, and half o’ them washed awye by the 
rynes; so I, for a diversion, as I sye, started in to 
paint all manner o’ fancy nymes and epitaphs on 
the headboards — any nyme that struck me fancy, 
and then underneath, an appropriate epitaph, and 
the dytes, of course — I didn’t forget the dytes. 

[So] 


THE STRANGEST THING 


Ye know, that was the rarest enjoyment I ever 
had. Ye don’t think so? Try it once ! Why, Gawd 
blyme me, there’s a chance for imagination in it, 
and genius and art — highest kind of art For in- 
stance now, I’d squat down in front of a blank 
headboard and think a bit, and the inspiration 
would come, and I’d write like this, maybe: ‘Jno. 
K. Boggart, of New Zealand. Born Dec. 21, 1870; 
died June 5, 1890,’ and then, underneath, ‘He 
Rests in Peace’; or else, ‘Elsie, Youngest Daugh- 
ter of Mary B. and William H. Terhune; b. May 
1 st, 1880; d. Nov. 25, 1889 — Not Lost, but Gone 
Before’; or agyne, ‘Lucas, Lieutenant T. V. 
Killed in Battle at Wady Haifa, Egypt, August 
30, 1889; born London, England, Jan. 3, 1850 — 
He Lies Like a Warrior, Tyking His Rest with 
His Martial Cloak Around Him’; or something 
humorous, as ‘Bohunkus, J. J.; born Germany, 
Oct. 3d, 1880; died (by request) Cape Town, 
Sept. 4, 1890’ ; or one that I remember as my very 
best effort, that read, ‘Willie, Beloved Son of Anna 
and Gustave Harris; b. April 1st, 1878; d. May 
5th, 1888 — He was a Man Before His Mother.’ 
Then I wrote me own nyme, with the epitaph, 
‘More Sinned Against Than Sinning;’ and the 
[81] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


Harvard chap’s too. His motto, I remember, was 
‘He Pulled 5 in His ’Varsity’s Boat.’ 

“Well, I had more sport that afternoon than I’ve 
ever had since. Y’know I felt as if I really were 
acquainted with all those people — with John 
Boggart, and Lieutenant Lucas, and Bohunkus, 
and Willie and all. Ah, that was a proper ex- 
perience. But right in the middle of me work 
here comes a telephone message from town : 
‘Body of dead baby found at mouth of city sewer 
— prepare gryve at once.’ Well, I dug that 
gryve, the first, last and only gryve I ever hope to 
dig. It came on to ryne like a water-spout, and 
oh, but it was jolly tough work. Then about 
four o’clock, just as I was finishing, the Harvard 
chap comes home, howling drunk. I see him go 
into the shack, and pretty soon out he comes, with 
a hoe in one hand and a table leg in the other. 
Soon as ever he sees me he makes a staggering 
run at me, swinging the hoe and the table leg and 
yelling like a Zulu indaba. Just to make every- 
thing agreeable and appropriate, I was down in 
the gryve, and it occurred to me that the situation 
was too uncommon convenient. I scrambled out and 
made a run for it, for there was murder in his eye, 
and for upwards of ten minutes we two played 
[82] 


THE STRANGEST THING 


blindman’s buff in that gryveyard, me dodging 
from one headboard to another, and he at me 
heels, chivying me like a fox and with intent to 
kill. All at once he trips over a headboard, and 
goes down and can’t get up, and at the same 
minute here comes the morgue wagon over Hos- 
pital Hill. 

“Now here comes the queer part of this lamen- 
table history. A trap was following that morgue 
wagon, a no-end swell trap, with a cob in the 
shafts that was worth an independent fortune. 
There was an old gent in the trap and a smart Cape 
boy driving. The old gent was the heaviest kind 
of a swell, but I’d never seen him before. The 
morgue wagon drives into the yard, and I — the 
Harvard chap being too far gone — points out the 
gryve. The driver of the morgue wagon chucks out 
the coffin, a bit of a three-foot box, and drives back 
to town. Then up comes the trap, and the old 
gent goes down — dressed up to the nines he was, 
in that heartbreaking ryne — and says he, ‘My 
man, I would like to have that coffin opened.’ By 
this time the Harvard chap had pulled himself 
together. He staggered up to the old gent and 
says, ‘No, can’t op’n no coffin, ’tsagainst all relu- 
gations — all regalutions, can’t permit no coffin 

[83] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


tobeopp’n.’ I wish you would have seen the old 
gent. Excited! The man was shaking like a 
flagstaff in a gyle, talked thick and stammered, he 
was so phased. Gawd strike me, what a scene ! I 
can see it now — that pauper burying ground wye 
down there in South Africa — no trees, all open and 
bleak. The pelting ryne, the open gryve and the 
drunken Harvard chap, and the excited old swell 
arguing over a baby’s coffin. 

Pretty soon the old gent brings up a sovereign 
and gives it to the Harvard chap. 

“ ‘Let her go,’ says he then, and with that he 
gives the top board of the coffin such a kick as 
started it an inch or more. With that — now 
listen to what I’m telling — with that the old gent 
goes down on his knees in the mud and muck, and 
kneels there waiting and fair gasping with ex- 
citement while the Harvard chap wrenches off the 
topboard. Before he had raised it four inches 
me old gent plunges his hand in quick, gropes there 
a second and takes out something — something shut 
in the palm of his hand. 

“ ‘That’s all,’ says he: ‘Thank you, my man,’ 
and gives us a quid apiece. We stood there like 
stuck swine, dotty with the queerness, the horrible- 
ness of the thing. 


[« 4 ] 


THE STRANGEST THING 


“ ‘That’s all,’ he says again, with a long 
breath of relief, as he climbs into his trap with his 
clothes all foul with mud. ‘That’s all, thank 
Gawd.’ Then to the Cape boy: ‘Drive her home, 
Jim.’ Five minutes later we lost him in the blur of 
the rain over Hospital Hill.” 

“But what was it he took out of the baby’s cof- 
fin?” said half a dozen men in a breath at this 
point. “What was it ? What could it have been?” 

“Ah, what was it?’ said Miller. “I’ll be 
damned if I know what it was. I never knew, I 
never will know.” 


1853 













* 

% 







A Reversion to Type 

























































A Reversion to Type 


S CHUSTER was too damned cheeky. He 
was the floor-walker in a department store 
on Kearny street, and I had opportunity to 
observe his cheek upon each of the few occasions 
on which I went into that store with — let us say my 
cousin. A floor-walker should let his communica- 
tions be “first aisle left,” or “elevator, second floor 
front,” or “third counter right,” for whatsoever is 
more than this cometh of evil. But Schuster used to 
come up to — my cousin, and take her gently by the 
hand and ask her how she did, and if she was to be 
out of town much that season, and tell her, with 
mild reproach in his eye, that she had been quite a 
stranger of late, while I stood in the background 
mumbling curses not loud but deep. 

However, my cousin does not figure in this yarn, 
nor myself. Paul Schuster is the hero — Paul 
Schuster, floor-walker in a department-store that 
sold ribbons and lace and corsets and other things, 
fancy, now! He was hopelessly commonplace, 
lived with a maiden aunt and a parrot in two 
[ 89 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


rooms, way out in the bleak streets around Lone 
Mountain. When on duty he wore a long black 
cutaway coat, a white pique four-in-hand and blue- 
grey “pants” that cost four dollars. Besides this 
he parted his hair on the side and entertained 
ideas on culture and refinement. His father had 
been a barber in the Palace Hotel barber shop. 

Paul Schuster had never heard anything of a 
grandfather. 

Schuster came to that department-store when he 
was about thirty. Five years passed; then ten 
— he was there yet — forty years old by now. Al- 
ways in a black cutaway and white tie, always with 
his hair parted on one side, always with the same 
damned cheek. A floor-walker, respectable as an 
English barrister, steady as an eight-day dock, a 
figure known to every woman in San Francisco. 
He had lived a floor-walker; as a floor-walker he 
would die. Such he was at forty. At forty-one 
he fell. Two days and all was over. 

It sometimes happens that a man will live a 
sober, steady, respectable, commonplace life for 
forty, fifty or even sixty years, and then, with- 
out the least sign of warning, suddenly go counter 
to every habit, to every trait of character and every 
rule of conduct he has been believed to possess. 

[ 90 ] 


A REVERSION TO TYPE 


The thing only happens to intensely respectable 
gentlemen, of domestic tastes and narrow hori- 
zons, who are just preparing to become old. Per- 
haps it is a last revolt of a restrained youth — the 
final protest of vigorous, heady blood, too long 
dammed up. This bolting season does not last 
very long. It comes upon a man between the 
ages of forty and fifty-five, and while it lasts the 
man should be watched more closely than a young 
fellow in his sophomore year at college. The 
vagaries of a sophomore need not be taken any 
more seriously than the skittishness of a colt, but 
when a fifty-year-old bolts, stand clear! 

On the second of May — two months and a day 
after his forty-first birthday — Paul Schuster 
bolted. It came upon him with the quickness of a 
cataclysm, like the sudden, abrupt development 
of latent mania. For a week he had been feeling ill 
at ease — restless; a vague discomfort hedged him 
in like an ill-fitting garment; he felt the moving of 
his blood in his wrists and his temples. A sub- 
tle desire to do something, he knew not what, bit 
and nibbled at his brain like the tooth of a tiny 
unfamiliar rodent. 

On the second of May, at twenty minutes 
after six, Schuster came out of the store at the 
[9i] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


tail end of the little army of home-bound clerks. 
He locked the door behind him, according to cus- 
tom, and stood for a moment on the asphalt, his 
hands in his pockets, fumbling his month’s pay. 
Then he said to himself, nodding his head 
resolutely : 

“To-night I shall get drunk — as drunk as I 
possibly can. I shall go to the most disreputable 
resorts I can find — I shall know the meaning of 
wine, of street fights, of women, of gaming, of jolly 
companions, of noisy mid-night suppers. I’ll do 
the town, or by God, the town will do me. Noth- 
ing shall stop me, and I will stop at nothing. 
Here goes!” 

Now, if Paul Schuster had only been himself 
this bolt of his would have brought him to nothing 
worse than the Police Court, and would have 
lasted but twenty-four hours at the outside. But 
Schuster, like all the rest of us, was not merely him- 
self. He was his ancestors as well. In him as in 
you and me, were generations — countless gener- 
ations — of forefathers. Schuster had in him the 
characteristics of his father, the Palace Hotel bar- 
ber, but also, he had the unknown characteristics 
of his grandfather, of whom he had never heard, 
and his great-grandfather, likewise ignored. It 
[ 92 ] 


A REVERSION TO TYPE 


is rather a serious matter to thrust yourself under 
the dominion of unknown, unknowable impulses 
and passions. This is what Schuster did that 
night. Getting drunk was an impulse belonging 
to himself; but who knows what “inherited tenden- 
cies,” until then dormant, the alcohol unleashed 
within him? Something like this must have hap-, 
pened to have accounted for what follows. 

Schuster went straight to the Palace Hotel bar, 
where he had cocktails, thence to the Poodle Dog, 
where he had a French dinner and champagne, 
thence to the Barbary Coast on upper Kearny 
street, and drank whiskey that rasped his throat 
like gulps of carpet tacks. Then, realising that 
San Francisco was his own principality and its 
inhabitants his vassals, he hired a carriage and 
drove to the Cliff House, and poured champagi^' 
into the piano in the public parlor. A waiter re- 
monstrated, and Paul Schuster, floor-walker and 
respectable citizen, bowled him down with a catsup 
bottle and stamped upon his abdomen. At the 
beginning of that evening he belonged to that 
class whom policemen are paid to protect. When 
he walked out of the Cliff House he was a free- 
booter seven feet tall, with a chest expansion of 
fifty inches. He paid the hack-driver a double 
[93 1 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


fare and strode away into the night and plunged 
into the waste of sand dunes that stretch back from 
the beach on the other side of the Park. 

It never could be found out what happened to 
Schuster, or what he did, during the next ten 
hours. We pick him up again in a saloon on the 
waterfront about noon the next day, with thirty 
dollars in his pocket and God knows what disor- 
derly notions in his crazed wits. At this time he 
was sober as far as the alcohol went. It might be 
supposed that now would have been the time for 
reflection and repentance and return to home and 
respectability. Return home! Not much! Schus- 
ter had began to wonder what kind of an ass he 
had been to have walked the floor of a department- 
store for the last score of years. Something was 
boiling in his veins. B-r-r-r! Let ’em all stand far 
from him now. 

That day he left San Francisco and rode the 
blind baggage as far as Colfax on the Overland. 
He chose Colfax because he saw the name chalked 
on a freight car at the Oakland mole. At Colfax, 
within three hours after his arrival, he fought 
with a restaurant man over the question of a 
broken saucer, and the same evening was told to 
leave the town by the sheriff. 

[ 94 ] 


A REVERSION TO TYPE 


Out of Colfax, some twenty-eight miles into the 
mountains, are placer gold mines, having for head- 
quarters a one-street town called Iowa Hill. 
Schuster went over to the Hill the same day on the 
stage. The stage got in at night and pulled up in 
front of the postoffice. Schuster went into the 
postoffice, which was also a Wells-Fargo office, a 
candy store, a drug store, a cigar store, and a 
lounging-room, and asked about hotels. 

Only the postmaster was in at that time, but as 
Schuster leaned across the counter, talking to him, 
a young man came in, with a huge spur on his left 
boot-heel. He and the postmaster nodded, and 
the young man slid an oblong object about the size 
of a brick across the counter. The object was 
wrapped in newspaper and seemed altogether too 
heavy for anything but metal — metal of the pre- 
cious kind, for example. 

“He?” answered the postmaster to Schuster, 
when the young man had gone. “He’s the super- 
intendent of the Little Bear mine on the other 
side*of the American River, about three miles by 
the trail.” 

For the next week Schuster set himself to work 
to solve the problem of how a man might obtain a 
shotgun in the vicinity of Iowa Hill without the 
[ 95 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


fact being remembered afterward and the man 
identified. It seemed good to him after a while 
to steal the gun from a couple of Chinamen who 
were washing gravel along the banks of the 
American River about two miles below the Little 
Bear. For two days he lay in the tarweed and witch 
hazel, on the side of the canyon overlooking the 
cabin, noted the time when both Chinamen were 
sufficiently far away, and stole the gun, together 
with a saw and a handful of cartridges loaded 
with buckshot. Within the next week he sawed 
off the gun-barrels sufficiently short, experimented 
once or twice with the buckshot, and found occa- 
sion to reconnoiter every step of the trail that led 
from the Little Bear to Iowa Hill. Also, he found 
out at the bar of the hotel at the Hill that the 
superintendent of the Little Bear amalgamated 
and reported the cleanup on Sundays. When he 
had made sure of this Schuster was seen no more 
about that little one-street mining town. 

“He says it’s Sunday,” said Paul Schuster to 
himself; “but that’s why it’s probably Saturday or 
Monday. He ain’t going to have the town know 
when he brings the brick over. It might even be 
Friday. I’ll make it a four-night watch.” 

There is a nasty bit on the trail from the Little 
[ 96 ] 


A REVERSION TO TYPE 


Bear to the Hill, steep as a staircase, narrow as a 
rabbit-run, and overhung with manzanita. The 
place is trumpet-mouthed in shape, and sound car- 
ries far. So, on the second night of his watch, 
Schuster could at last plainly hear the certain 
sounds that he had been waiting for — sounds that 
jarred sharply on the prolonged roll of the Morn- 
ing Star stamps, a quarter of a mile beyond the 
canyon. The sounds were those of a horse thresh- 
ing through the gravel and shallow water of the 
ford in the river just below. He heard the horse 
grunt as he took the slope of the nearer bank, and 
the voice of his rider speaking to him came dis- 
tinctly to his ears. Then silence for one — two — 
three minutes, while the stamp mill at the Morn- 
ing Star purred and rumbled unceasingly and 
Schuster’s heart pumped thickly in his throat. 
Then a blackness blacker than that of the night 
heaved suddenly against the grey of the sky, close 
in upon him, and a pebble clicked beneath a shod 
hoof. 

“Pull up!” Schuster was in the midst of the 
trail, his cheek caressing the varnished stock. 

“Whoa ! Steady there ! What in hell-—” 

“Pull up. You know what’s wanted. Chuck 
us that brick.” 


[ 97 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


The superintendent chirped sharply to the 
horse, spurring with his left heel. 

“Stand clear there, God damn you! I’ll ride 
you down!” 

The stock leaped fiercely in Schuster’s arm-pit, 
nearly knocking him down, and, in the light of two 
parallel flashes, he saw an instantaneous picture — 
rugged skyline, red-tinted manzanita bushes, the 
plunging mane and head of a horse, and above it 
a Face with open mouth and staring eyes, smoke- 
wreathed and hatless. The empty stirrup thrashed 
across Schuster’s body as the horse scraped by him. 
The trail was dark in front of him. He could 
see nothing. But soon he heard a little bubbling 
noise and a hiccough. Then all fell quiet again. 

“I got you, all right!” 

Thus Schuster, the ex-floor-walker, whose part 
hitherto in his little life-drama had been to say, 
“first aisle left,” “elevator, second floor,” “first 
counter right.” 

Then he went down on his knees, groping at the 
warm bundle in front of him. But he found no 
brick. It had never occurred to him that the super- 
intendent might ride over to town for other 
reasons than merely to ship the week’s cleanup. 
He struck a light and looked more closely — looked 
[ 98 ] 


A REVERSION TO TYPE 


at the man he had shot. He could not tell whether 
it was the superintendent or not, for various rea- 
sons, but chiefly because the barrels of the gun 
had been sawn off, the gun loaded with buckshot, 
and both barrels fired simultaneously at close 
range. 

Men coming over the trail from the Hill the 
next morning found the young superintendent, and 
spread the report of what had befallen him. 

* * * * * * 

When the Prodigal Son became hungry he came 
to himself. So it was with Schuster. Living on 
two slices of bacon per day (eaten raw for fear of 
kindling fires) is what might be called starving 
under difficulties, and within a week Schuster was 
remembering and longing for floor-walking and 
respectability. Within a month of his strange dis- 
appearance he was back in San Francisco again 
knocking at the door of his aunt’s house on Geary 
street. A week later he was taken on again at his 
old store, in his old position, his unexcused absence 
being at length, and under protest, condoned by a 
remembrance of “long and faithful service.” 

Schuster picked up his old life again precisely 
where he had left it on the second of May, six 
weeks previously — picked it up and stayed by it, 

[99] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


calmly, steadily, uneventfully. The day before he 
died he told this story to his maiden aunt, who 
told it to me, with the remark that it was, of 
course, an absurd lie. Perhaps it was. 

One thing, however, remains to tell. I repeated 
the absurd lie to a friend of mine who is in the 
warden’s office over at the prison of San Quentin. 
I mentioned Schuster’s name. 

“Schuster! Schuster!” he repeated; “why we 
had a Schuster over here once — a long time ago, 
though. An old fellow he was, and a bad egg, too. 
Commuted for life, though. Son was a barber at 
the Palace Hotel.” 

“What was old Schuster up for?” I asked. 

“Highway robbery,” said my friend. 


[ioo] 


“Boom” 










f 














“ Boom ” 


S AN DIEGO in Southern California, is the 
largest city in the world. If your geogra- 
phies and guide-books and encyclopaedias 
have told you otherwise, they have lied, or their 
authors have never seen San Diego. Why, San 
Diego is nearly twenty-five miles from end to end ! 
Why, San Diego has more miles of sidewalk, more 
leagues of street railways, more measureless lengths 
of paved streets, more interminable systems of 
sewer-piping, than has London or Paris or even — 
even — even Chicago (and I who say so was born 
in Chicago, too) ! There are statelier houses in 
San Diego than in any other “of the world’s great 
centres,” more spacious avenues, more imposing 
business blocks, more delicious parks, more over- 
powering public buildings, the pavements are better 
laid, the electric lighting is more systematic, the 
railroad and transportation facilities more accom- 
modating, the climate is better than the Riviera, 
the days are longer, the nights shorter, the men 
finer, the women prettier, the theatres more at- 
tractive, the restaurants cheaper, the wines more 

[ 103] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


sparkling, “business opportunities” lie in wait for 
the unfortunate at dark street-corners and fly at 
his throat till he must fain fight them off. Life 
is one long, glad fermentation. There is no dark- 
ness in San Diego, nor any more night. 

Incidentally corner lots are desirable. 

All of this must be so, because you may read it 
in the green and gold prospectus of the San Diego 
Land and Improvement Company (consolidated), 
sent free on application — that is, at one time dur- 
ing the boom it was sent free — but to-day the 
edition is out of print, and can only be seen in the 
collection of bibliophiles and wealthy amateurs, 
and the boom is only an echo now. But when the 
guests of the big Coronado Hotel over on the 
island come across to the main land and course 
jackrabbits with greyhounds in the country to the 
north of the town, their horses’ hoofs, as they 
plunge through the sagebrush and tar weed, will 
sometimes slide and clatter upon a bit of concrete 
sidewalk, half sunk of its own weight into the 
sand; or the jack will be started in a low square 
of bricks, such as is built for frame house founda- 
tions, and which make excellent jumping for the 
horses. There is a colony of rattlers on the shores 
of a marsh to the southwest (the maps call it 

[ 104] 


“BOOM” 


Amethyst Lake) and the little half-breed Indians 
catch the tarantulas and horned toads that you buy 
alive in glass jars on the hotel veranda, near the 
postoffice site, and everything is very gay and 
pleasant and picturesque. 

Why I remember it all so well is because I found 
Steele in this place. You see, Steele was a very 
good friend of mine though he was Oxon, and I 
only a man from Chicago. When his wife knew 
I was coming west she gave me Steele’s address, 
and told me I was to look him up. Since she told 
me this with much insistence and reiteration and 
with tears in her voice, I made it a point to be 
particular. She had not heard from Steele in two 
years. The address she gave me was “Hon. Ralph 
Truax-Steele, Elmwood avenue and One Hundred 
and Eighty-eighth street, San Diego, California.” 

When I arrived at San Diego I found it would 
be advisable to hire a horse, for 188th street, 
instead of waiting for the Elmwood Avenue elec- 
tric car, and when I asked for directions a red- 
headed man whose father was Irish and whose 
mother was Chinese, offered to act as guide for 
twenty dollars. He said, though, he would furnish 
his own outfit. I demurred and he went away. 
I was told that some eight miles out beyond the 

[105] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


range I would find a water-hole, and that if I held 
to the southwest after leaving this hole, keeping 
my horse’s ears between the double peak of a dis- 
tant mountain called Little Two Top, I would 
come after a while to a lamp-post with a tarantula’s 
nest where the lamp should have been. It would 
be hard to miss this lamp-post, they told me, as 
the desert was very flat thereabouts, and the lamp- 
posts could be seen for a radius of ten miles. Also, 
there might be water there — the horse would smell 
it out if there was. Also, it was a good place 
to camp, because of a tiny ledge of shale out- 
cropping there. I was to be particular about this 
lamp-post, because it stood at the corner of Elm- 
wood avenue and 1 8 8th street. 

When I asked about the Hon. Truax-Steele, 
Oxon, information was less explicit. They shook 
their heads. One of them seemed to recollect a 
“shack” about a mile hitherward of Two Top, 
a statement that was at once contradicted by some- 
one else. Might have been an old Digger “wicky- 
up.” Sometimes the Indians camped in the valley 
on their way to ghost dances and tribal feasts. It 
wasn’t a place for a white man to live, chiefly 
because the climate offered so many advantages 
and attractions to horned toads, tarantulas and 
[106] 


J 


“BOOM” 


rattlesnakes. Then the red-headed Chinese-Irish- 
man came back and said, with an accent that was 
beyond all words, that a sheepherder had once 
told him of a loco-man out beyond McIntyre’s 
waterhole, and another man said that, “Yes, that 
was so; he’d passed flasks with a loco-man out that 
way once last June, when he was out looking for a 
strayed pony. In fact, the loco-man lived out 
there, had a son, too, leastways a kid lived with 
him.” This seemed encouraging. The Hon. 
Truax-Steele, Oxon, was accredited with a son — 
so his wife had said, who should know. So I 
started out, simultaneously hoping and dreading 
that the loco-man and the honourable Truax might 
be one flesh. 

I left San Diego at four o’clock A. M. to avoid 
as much as possible the heat of mid-day, and just 
at sunset saw what might have been a cactus plant 
standing out stark and still on the white blur of 
sage and alkali like an exclamation point on a 
blank page. It was the lamp-post of the spider’s 
nest that marked the intersection of Elmwood 
avenue and 1 88th street. And then my horse 
shied, with his hind legs only, in the way good 
horses have, and Ralph Truax-Steele rose out 
of a dried muck-hole under the bit. 

[ io 7 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


I had expected a madman, but his surprise and 
pleasure at seeing me were perfectly sane. After 
awhile he said: “Sorry, old boy. It’s the hospi- 
tality of the Arab I can give you ; nothing better. 
A handful of dates (we call ’em caned prunes out 
here), the dried flesh of a kid (Californian for 
jerked beef), and a mouthful of cold water, which 
the same we will thicken with forty-rod rye; inci- 
dentally, coffee, black and unsweet, and tobacco, 
which at one time I should have requested my 
undergroom to discontinue.” 

We went to his “shack” (I observed it to be 
built of discarded bricks, mortared with ’dobe 
mud) and I was made acquainted with his boy, 
Carrington Truax-Steele, fitting for Oxford under 
tutelage of his father. 

We had supper, after which the Hon. Truax, 
Sr. stood forth under the kindling glory of that 
desert twilight by that incongruous, reeling lamp- 
post, booted, bare-headed and woolen-shirted, and 
to the low swinging scimitar of the new welded 
moon declaimed Creon’s speech to Oedipus in 
sonorous Greek. When he was done he exclaimed, 
abruptly: “Come along, I’ll show you ’round.” 

I looked about that stricken reach of alkali, and 
followed him wondering. That evening the Hon. 
[io81 


“BOOM" 


Ralph Truax-Steele, Oxon, showed me his real 
estate and also, unwittingly, the disordered work- 
ings of his brain. The rest I guessed and after- 
wards confirmed. 

Steele had gone mad over the real estate “boom” 
that had struck the town five years previously, 
when land was worth as many dollars as could 
cover it, and men and women fought with each 
other to buy lots around the water hole called 
Amethyst Lake. The “boom” had collapsed, and 
with it Steele’s reason, for to him the boom was 
on the point of , recommencing; sane enough on 
other points, in this direction the man’s grip upon 
himself was gone for good. 

“There,” he said to me that evening as we 
crushed our way through the sagebrush, indicating 
a low roll on the desert surface, “there are my villa 
sites, here will run a driveway, and yonder where 
you see the skeleton of that steer I’m thinking of 
putting up a little rustic stone chapel.” 

“Ralph, Ralph,” I said, “come out of this. 
Can’t you see that the whole business is dead and 
done for long since? You’re going back with me 
to God’s country to-morrow — going back to your 
wife, you and the boy. She sent me to fetch you.” 

He stared at me wonderingly. 

[109} 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“Why, it’s bound to come within a few days,” 
he said. “Wait till next Wednesday, say, and you 
won’t recognise this place. There’ll ibe a rush 
here such as there was when Oklahoma was opened. 
We have everything for us — climate, temperature, 
water. Harry,” he added in my ear, “look around 
you. You are standing on the site of one of the 
grandest, stateliest cities of civilisation.” 

That night the boy Carrington and I sat late 
in consultation while Steele slept. “Nothing but 
force will do it,” said the lad. “I know him well, 
and I’ve tried it again and again. It’s no use any 
other way.” So force it was. 

How we got Steele back to San Diego I may not 
tell. Carrington is the only other person who 
knows, and I’m sure he will say nothing. When 
Steele found himself in the heart of a real city 
and began to look about him, and take stock of 
his surroundings, the real collapse came. He is in 
a sanitarium now somewhere in Illinois, and his 
wife and son see him on Wednesday and Sunday 
afternoons from two till five. Steele will never 
come out of that sanitarium, though he now real- 
ises that his desert city was a myth, a creation of 
his own distorted wits. He’s sound enough on 
that point, but a strange inversion has taken place. 
It is now upon all other subjects that he is insane, 
[no] 





















The 




Dis-A ssociated Charities 










! 














































The 

Dr s-A ssociated C harities 


T HERE used to be a place in feudal Paris 
called the Court of Miracles, and Mister 
Victor Hugo has told us all about it. This 
Court was a quarter of the town where the beggars 
lived, and it was called “of the miracles”, because 
once across its boundaries the blind saw, the lame 
walked and the poor cared not to have the gospel 
preached unto them. 

San Francisco has its Court of Miracles too. 
It is a far cry thither, for it lies on the other side 
of Chinatown and Dagotown, and blocks beyond 
Luna’s restaurant. It is in the valley between 
Telegraph Hill and Russian Hill, and you must 
pass through it as you go down to Meigg’s Wharf 
where the Government tugs tie up. 

One has elected to call it the Court of Miracles, 
but it is not a court, and the days of miracles are 
over. It is a row of seven two-story houses, one 
of them brick. The brick house is over a saloon 

[ 113] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


kept by a Kanaka woman and called “The Eiffel 
Tower.” Here San Francisco’s beggars live and 
have their being. That is, a good many of them. 

The doubled-up old man with the white beard 
and neck-handkerchief who used to play upon a 
zither and the sympathies of the public on the 
corner of Sutter street has moved out, and one can 
find no trace of him, and Father Elphick, the 
white-headed vegetarian of Lotta’s Fountain, is 
dead. But plenty of the others are left. The 
neatly dressed fellow with dark blue spectacles, 
who sings the Marseillaise , accompanying himself 
upon an infinitesimal hand organ, is here; Mrs. 
McCleaverty is here, and the old bare-headed man 
who sits on the street corner by the Bohemian Club, 
after six o’clock in the evening and turns the crank 
of a soundless organ, has here set up his everlast- 
ing rest. 

The beggars of the Seven Houses are genuine 
miserables. Perhaps they have an organisation 
and a president, I don’t know. But I do know 
that Leander and I came very near demoralising 
the whole lot of them. 

More strictly speaking, it was Leander who did 
the deed, I merely looked on and laughed, but 
Leander says that by laughing I lent him my im- 
[ ii4 ] 


THE DIS-ASSOCI A TED CHARITIES 


moral support, and am therefore party to the act. 

Leander and I had been dining at the “Red 
House,” which is a wine-shop that Gelette Burgess 
discovered in an alley not far from the county 
jail. Leander and I had gone there because we 
like to sit at its whittled tables and drink its Vin 
Ordinaire ( tres ordinaire) out of tin gill measures; 
also we like its salad and its thick slices of bread 
that you eat after you have rubbed them with an 
onion or a bit of garlic. We always go there in 
evening dress in order to impress the Proletariat. 

On this occasion after we had dined and had 
come out again into the gas and gaiety of the 
Mexican quarter we caromed suddenly against 
Cluness. Cluness is connected with some sort of a 
charitable institution that has a house somewhere 
in the “Quarter.” He says that he likes to alle- 
viate distress wherever he sees it; and that after 
all, the best thing in life is to make some poor 
fellow happy for a few moments. 

Leander and I had nothing better to do that 
evening so we went around with Cluness, and 
watched him as he gave a month’s rent to an infirm 
old lady on Stockton street, a bundle of magazines 
to a whining old rascal at the top of a nigger tene- 
ment, and some good advice to a Chinese girl who 
[ii5] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


didn’t want to go to the Presbyterian Mission 
House. 

“That’s my motto,” says he, as we came away 
from the Chinese girl, “alleviate misery wherever 
you see it and try and make some poor fellow 
happy for a few moments.” 

“Ah, yes,” exclaimed this farceur Leander, 
sanctimoniously, while I stared, “that’s the only 
thing worth while,” and he sighed and wagged 
his head. 

Cluness went on to tell us about a deserving case 
he had — we were going there next — in fact, in- 
nocently enough, he described the Seven Houses 
to us, never suspecting they were the beggar’s head- 
quarters. He said there was a poor old paralytic 
woman lived there, who had developed an appetite 
for creamed oysters. 

“It’s the only thing,” said Cluness, “that she 
can keep on her stomach.” 

“She told you so?” asked Leander. 

“Yes, yes.” 

“Well, she ought to know.” 

We arrived at the Seven Houses and Cluness 
paused before the tallest and dirtiest. 

“Here’s where she lives; I’m going up for a 
few moments.” 


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THE DISASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


“Have a drink first,” suggested Leander, fixing 
his eyes upon the saloon under the brick house. 

We three went in and sat down at one of the 
little round zinc tables — painted to imitate marble 
— and the Kanaka woman herself brought us our 
drinks. While we were drinking, one of the beg- 
gars came in. He was an Indian, totally blind, 
and in the day time played a mouth-organ on Grant 
Avenue near a fashionable department store. 

“Tut, tut,” said Cluness, “poor fellow, blind, 
you see, what a pity, I’ll give him a quarter.” 

“No, let me,” exclaimed Leander. 

As he spoke the door opened again and another 
blind man groped in. This fellow I had seen often. 
He sold lavender in little envelopes on one of the 
corners of Kearny street. He was a stout, smooth- 
faced chap and always kept his chin in the air. 

“What misery there is in this world,” sighed 
Cluness as his eye fell upon this latter, “one half 
the world don’t know how — ” 

“Look, they know each other,” said Leander. 
The lavender man had groped his way to the 
Indian’s table — evidently it was their especial table 
— and the two had fallen a-talking. They ordered 
a sandwich apiece and a small mug of beer. 

“Let’s do something for ’em,” exclaimed Clu- 

[n 7] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


ness, with a burst of generosity. “Let’s make ’em 
remember this night for years to come. Look at 
’em trying to be happy over a bit of dry bread and 
a pint of flat beer. I’m going to give ’em a dollar 
each.” 

“No, no,” protested Leander. “Let me fix it, 
I’ve more money than you. Let me do a little good 
now and then. You don’t want to hog all the 
philanthropy, Cluness, Til give ’em something.” 

“It would be very noble and generous of you, 
indeed,” cried Cluness, “and you’ll feel better for 
it, see if you don’t. But I must go to my paralytic. 
You fellows wait for me. I’ll be down in twenty 
minutes.” 

I frowned at Leander when Cluness was gone. 
“Now what tom-foolery is it this time?” said I. 

“Tom-foolery,” exclaimed Leander, blankly. 
“It’s philanthropy. By Jove, here’s another chap 
with his lamps blown out. Look at him.” 

A third unfortunate, blind as the other two, 
had just approached the Indian and the lavender 
mar^ The three were pals, one could see that at 
half a glance. No doubt they met at this table 
every night for beer and sandwiches. The last 
blind man was a Dutchman. I had seen him from 
time to time on Market street, with a cigar-box 
[n8] 


THE DIS-ASSOCI A TED CHARITIES 


tied to his waist and a bunch of pencils in his fist. 

“Eins!” called the Dutchman to the Kanaka, as 
he sat down with the lavender man and the Indian. 
“Eins — mit a hem sendvidge.” 

“Excuse me,” said Leander, coming up to their 
table. 

What was it? Did those three beggars, their 
instinct trained by long practice, recognise the 
alms-giver in the sound of Leander’ s voice, or in 
the step. It is hard to say, but instantly each one 
of them dropped the mildly convivial and assumed 
the humbly solicitous air, turning his blind head 
towards Leander, listening intently. Leander took 
out his purse and made a great jingling with his 
money. Now, I knew that Leander had exactly 
fifteen dollars — no more, no less — fifteen dollars, 
in three five-dollar gold pieces — not a penny of 
change. Could it be possible that he was going 
to give a gold piece to the three beggars? It was, 
evidently, for I heard him say: 

“Excuse me. IVe often passed you fellows on 
the street, in town, and I guess I’ve always been 
too short of change, or in too much of a hurry to 
remember you. But I’m going to make up for it 
now, if you’ll permit me. Here — ” and he jingled 
his money, “here is a five dollar gold piece that 

[119] 


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I’d like to have you spend between the three of 
you to-night, and drink my health, and — and — 
have a good time, you know. Catch on?” 

They caught on. 

“May God bless you, young man!” exclaimed 
the old lavender man. 

The Indian grunted expressively. 

The Dutchman twisted about in his place and 
shouted in the direction of the bar: 

“Mek ut er bottle Billzner und er Gotha druffle, 
mit ein m-borted Frankfooter bei der side on.” 

The Kanaka woman came up, and the Dutch- 
man repeated his order. The lavender man paused 
reflectively tapping his brow, then he delivered 
himself: “A half spring chicken,” he said with 
profound gravity, “rather under done, and some 
chicory salad and a bottle of white wine — put the 
bottle in a little warm water for about two minutes 
— and some lyonnaise potatoes with onions, and — 

“Donner wetter,” shouted the Dutchman, “ge- 
nuch !” smiting the table with his fist. 

The other subsided. The Kanaka woman 
turned to the Indian. 

“Whiskey,” he grunted, “plenty whiskey, big 
beefsteak, soh,” and he measured off a yard on the 
table. 


[ 120] 


THE DIS-ASSOCIA TED CHARITIES 


“Leander,” said I, when he rejoined me, ‘‘that 
was foolishness, you’ve thrown away your five dol- 
lars and these fellows are going to waste it in 
riotous living. You see the results of indiscrimi- 
nate charity.” 

“I’ve not thrown it away. Cluness would say 
that if it made them happier according to their 
lights it was well invested. I hate the charity that 
means only medicines, clean sheets, new shoes and 
sewerage. Let ’em be happy in their own way.” 
There could be no doubt that the three blind men 
were happy. They loaded their table with spring 
chickens, Gotha truffles, beefsteaks, and all manner 
of “alcoholic beverages,” till the zinc disappeared 
beneath the accumulation of plates and bottles. 
They drank each other’s health and they pledged 
that of Leander, standing up. The Dutchman 
ordered: “Zwei Billzner more alreatty.” The 
lavender man drank his warmed white wine with 
gasps of infinite delight, and after the second whis- 
key bottle had been opened, the Indian began to 
say strange and terrible things in his own language. 

Cluness came in and beamed on them. 

“See how happy you’ve made them, Leander,” 
he said gratefully. “They’ll always remember this 
night.” 

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“They always will,” said Leander solemnly. 

“I’ve got to go though,” said Cluness. I made 
as if to go with him but Leander plucked my coat 
under the table. I caught his eye. 

“I guess we two will stay,” said I. Cluness left, 
thanking us again and again. 

“I don’t know what it is,” said I seriously to 
Leander, “but to-night you seem to me to be too 
good to be wholesome.” 

“I” said Leander, blankly. “But I suppose I 
should expect to be misjudged.” 

Just then the Kanaka woman came over to give 
us our check. 

“This is on me,” said Leander, but he was so 
slow in fumbling for his purse that I was obliged, 
•in all decency, to pay. 

After she left us, the Kanaka went over to the 
blind men’s table, and, check-pad in hand, ran 
her eye over the truffles, beer, chicken, beefsteak, 
wine and whiskey, and made out her check. 

“Four dollars, six bits,” she announced. 

There was a silence, not one of the blind men 
moved. 

“Watch now,” said Leander. 

“Four, six bits,” repeated the Kanaka, her hand 
on her hip. 


[ 122] 


THE DIS-ASSOCIA TED CHARITIES 


Still none of the blind men moved. 

“Vail, den,” cried the Dutchman, “vich von you 
two vellars has dose money, pay oop. Fier thalers 
und sax beets.” 

“I haven’t it,” exclaimed the lavender man, 
“Jim has it,” he added, turning to the Indian. 

“No have got, no have got,” grunted the Indian. 
“You have got, you or Charley.” 

I looked at Leander. 

“Now, what have you done?” 

For answer Leander showed me three five 
dollar gold pieces in the palm of his hand. 

“Bach one of those chaps thinks that one of the 
other two has the gold piece. I just pretended to 
give it to one of ’em, jingled my coin, and then 
put it back, I didn’t give ’em a cent. Each one 
thought I had given it to the other two. How 
could they tell, they were blind, don’t you see.” 

I reached for my hat. 

“I’m going to get out of here.” 

Leander pulled me back. 

“Not just yet, wait a few moments. Listen.” 

“Vail, vail,” cried the Dutchman, beginning to 
get red. “You doand vants to cheats Missus 
Amaloa, den berhaps — yes, Zhim,” he cried to the 
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Indian, “pay oop, or ees ut you den, Meest’r 
Paites, dat hab dose finf thalers?” 

“No have got,” gurgled the Indian, swaying in 
his place as he canted the neck of the whiskey bot- 
tle towards his lips. 

“I thought you had the money,” protested Mr. 
Bates, the lavender man, “you or Jim.” 

“No have got,” whooped the Indian, beginning 
to get angry. “Hug-gh ! You got money. He give 
you money,” and he turned his face towards the 
Dutchman. 

“That’s what I thought,” asserted Mr. Bates. 

“Tausend Teufels no,” shouted the other. I 
tell you no.” 

<l You, you” growled the Indian, plucking at 
Mr. Bates’ coat sleeve, “you have got.” 

“Yah, soh,” cried the Dutchman, shaking his 
finger at the lavender man, excitedly, “pay dose 
finf thalers, Meest’r Paites.” 

“Pay yourself,” exclaimed the other, “I haven’t 
touched them. I’ll be any name, I’ll be any 
name if I’ve touched them.” 

“Well, I ain’t going to wait here all night,” 
shrilled the Kanaka woman impatiently. The 
Dutchman shook his finger solemnly towards 
[ 124] 


THE DISASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


where he thought the Indian was sitting. 

“It’s der Indyun. It’s Zhim. Get ut vrom 
Zhim” 

“Lie, lie,” vociferated the Indian, “white man 
lie. No have got. You hav got, or you.” 

“I’ll turn my pockets inside out,” exclaimed Mr. 
Bates. 

“Schmarty,” cried the Dutchman. “Can I see 
dose pocket?” 

“Thief, thief,” exclaimed the Indian, shaking 
his long black hair. “You steal money.” 

The other two turned on him savagely. 

“There aint no man going to call me that.” 

“Vat he say, vait, und I vill his het mit der 
boddle demolisch. Who you say dat to, mee, or 
Meest’r Bates?” 

“Oh, you make me tired,” cried the lavender 
man, “you two. One of you two, pay Missus 
Amaloa and quit fooling.” 

“Come on,” cried the Kanaka, “pay up or I’ll 
ring for the police.” 

“Vooling, vooling,” shouted the Dutchman, 
dancing in his rage. “You sheats Missus Amaloa 
und you gall dot vooling.” 

(( IVho cheats,” cried the other two simultane- 
ously. 


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“Vail, how do / know,” yelled the Dutchman, 
purple to the eyes. “How do I know vich.” 

The Kanaka turned to Leander. 

“Say, which of these fellows did you give that 
money to?” 

Leander came up. 

“Ah-h, now we vill know,” said the Dutchman. 

Leander looked from one to the other. Then 
an expression of perplexity came into his face. He 
scratched an ear. 

“Well, I thought it was this German gentle- 
man.” 

“Vat!” 

“Only it seems to me I had the money in my 
left hand, and he, you see, is on the right hand 
of the table. It might have been him, and then 
again it might have been one of the other two 
gentlemen. It’s so difficult to remember. Wasn’t 
it you,” turning to Mr. Bates, “or no, wasn’t it 
you” to the Indian. “But it couldn't have been 
the Indian gentleman, and it couldn’t have been 
Mr. Bates here, and yet I’m sure it wasn’t the 
German gentleman, and, however, I must have 
given it to one of the three. Didn’t I lay the coin 
down on the table and go away and leave it,” 
Leander struck his forehead. “Yes, I think that’s 
[126] 


THE DISASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


what I did. I’m sorry,” he said to the Kanaka, 
“that you are having any trouble, it’s some mis- 
understanding.” 

“Oh, I’ll get it all right,” returned the Kanaka, 
confidently. “Come on, one of you fellows dig 
up.” 

Then the quarrel broke out afresh. The three 
blind men rose to their feet, blackguarding and 
vilifying one another till the room echoed. Now 
it was Mr. Bates and the Dutchman versus the 
Indian, now the Indian and Dutchman versus Mr. 
Bates, now the Indian and Mr. Bates versus the 
Dutchman. At every instant the combinations 
varied with kaleidoscopic swiftness. They shouted, 
they danced, and they shook their fists towards 
where they guessed each other’s faces were. The 
Indian, who had been drinking whiskey between 
intervals of the quarrel, suddenly began to rail 
and howl in his own language, and at times even 
the Dutchman lapsed into the vernacular. The 
Kanaka woman lost her wits altogether, and de- 
clared that in three more minutes she would ring 
for the police. 

Then all at once the Dutchman swung both fists 
around him and caught the Indian a tremendous 
crack in the side of the head. The Indian vented 
[ 127] 


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an ear-splitting war-whoop and began pounding 
Mr. Bates who stood next to him. In the next in- 
stant the three were fighting all over the room. 
They lost each other, they struck furious blows at 
the empty air, they fell over tables and chairs, or 
suddenly came together with a dreadful shock 
and terrible cries of rage. The Dutchman bumped 
against Leander and before he could get away 
had smashed his silk hat down over his ears. The 
noise of their shouting could have been heard a 
block. 

“Thief, thief.’’ 

“Teef yourselluf, pay oop dose finf thalers.” 

“No have got, no have got.” 

[And then the door swung in and four officers 
began rounding them up like stampeded sheep. 
Not until he was in the wagon could the Dutchman 
believe that it was not the Indian and Mr. Bates 
who had him by either arm, and even in the 
wagon, as they were being driven to the precinct 
station-hfouse, the quarrel broke out from time to 
time. 

As we heard the rattle of the patrol-wagon’s 
wheels growing fainter over the cobbles, we rose 
to go. The Kanaka stood with her hands on her 
hips glaring at the zinc table with its remnants of 
[128] 


THE BIS-ASSOCIATED CHARITIES 


truffle, chicken and beefsteak and its empty bottles. 
Then she exclaimed, “And I’m shy four dollars 
and six bits.” 

On the following Saturday night Leander and 
I were coming from a Mexican dinner at Luna’s. 
Suddenly some one caught our arms from behind. 
It was Cluness. 

“I want to thank you fellows again,” he ex- 
claimed, “for your kindness to those three blind 
chaps the other night. It was really good of 
you. I believe they had five dollars to spend 
between them. It was really fine of you, Leander.” 

“Oh, I don’t mind five dollars,” said Leander, 
“if it can make a poor fellow any happier for a 
few moments. That’s the only thing that’s worth 
while in this life.” 

“I’ll bet you felt better and happier for doing 
it.” 

“Well, it did make me happy.” 

“Of course, and those three fellows will never 
forget that night.” 

“No, I guess they won’t,” said Leander. 


[ 129] 








Son of a Sheik 



Son of a Sheik 


T HE smell of the warm slime on the Jeliffe 
River and the sweet, heavy and sickening 
odour that exhaled into the unspeakable heat 
of the desert air from the bunches of dead and 
scorched water-reeds are with me yet; also the sight 
of the long stretch of dry mud bank, rising by shal- 
low and barely perceptible degrees to the edge of 
the desert sands, and thus disclosed by the shrink- 
age of the Jeliffe during the hot months. The 
mud banks were very broad and very black except 
where they touched the desert; here the sand had 
sifted over them in light transparent sprinklings. 
In rapidly drying under the sun of the Sahara, they 
had cracked and warped into thousands of tiny 
concave cakes that looked, for all the world, like 
little saucers in which Indian ink has been mixed. 
(If you are an artist, as was Thevenot, you will the 
better understand this.) 

Then there was the reach of the desert that 
drew off on either hand and rolled away, ever so 
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THE THIRD CIRCLE 


gently, toward the place where the hollow sky 
dropped out of sight behind the shimmering hori- 
zon, swelling grandly and gradually like some 
mighty breast which, panting for breath in the 
horrible heat, had risen in a final gasp and had 
then, in the midst of it, suddenly stiffened and 
become rigid. On this colourless bosom of the 
desert, where nothing stirred but the waxing light 
in the morning and the waning light in the night, 
lay tumbled red and gray rocks, with thin drifts 
of sand in their rifts and crevices and grey-green 
cacti squatting or sprawling in their blue shadows. 
And there was nothing more, nothing, nothing, 
except the appalling heat and the maddening si- 
lence. 

And in the midst of it all, — we. 

Now “we” broadly and generally speaking, were 
the small right wing of General Pawtrot’s division 
of the African service; speaking less broadly and 
less generally, “we” were the advance-guard of 
said division; and, speaking in the narrowest and 
most particular sense, “we” were the party of war- 
correspondents, specials, extras, etc., who were 
accompanying said advance-guard of said wing of 
said army of said service for reasons herein to be 
set forth. 


[ 134 ] 


SON OF A SHEIK 

As the long, black scow of the commissariat 
went crawling up the torpid river with the advance- 
guard straggling along upon the right, “we” lay 
upon the deck under the shadow of the scow’s awn- 
ing and talked and drank seltzer. 

I forget now what led up to it, but Ponscarme 
had said that the Arabs were patriotic, when Bab 
Azzoun cut in and said something which I shall 
repeat as soon as I have told you about Bab Az- 
zoun himself. 

Bab Azzoun had been born twenty-nine years 
before this time, at Tlemcen, of Kabyle parents 
(his father was a sheik). He had been trans- 
planted to France at the age of ten, and had 
flourished there in a truly remarkable manner. 
He had graduated fifth from the Polytechnique; 
he had written books that had been “courronees 
par I’Academie” ; he had become naturalised; he 
had been prominent in politics (no one can cut a 
wide swath in Paris in anything without hitting 
against la politique;) he had occupied important 
positions in two embassies; he was a diplomat of 
no mean qualities; he had influence; he dressed in 
faultless French fashion; he had owned “Crusa- 
der”; he had lost money on him; he had applied 
to the government for the office of “Sous-chef-des 
[ 135 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


bureaux-Arabes dans VOranj’ in order to recoup; 
he had obtained it; he had come on with “us”, and 
was now on this, his first visit to his fatherland 
since his tenth year, on his way to his post. 

And when Ponscarme had spoken thus about 
the patriotism of the Arabs, Bab Azzoun made 
him answer: “The Arabs are not sufficiently edu- 
cated to be true patriots.” 

“Bah!” said Santander, “a man does not require 
to be educated in order to be a patriot. And, 
indeed, the rudest nations have ever been the most 
devotedly patriotic.” 

“Yes,” said Bab Azzoun, “but it is a narrow 
and a very selfish patriotism.” 

“I can’t see that,” put in Ponscarme; “a patriot 
is like an egg — he is either good or bad. There 
is no such thing as a ‘good enough egg,’ there is 
no such thing as a ‘good enough patriot’ — if a 
man is one at all, he is a perfect one.” 

“I agree,” answered Bab Azzoun; “yet patri- 
otism can be more or less narrow. Listen and I 
will explain” — he raised himself from the deck on 
his elbow and gestured with the amber mouth- 
piece of his chibouk — “Patriotism has passed 
through five distinct stages; first, it was only love 
of family — of parents and kindred; then, as the 
[136] 


SON OF A SHEIK 


family grows and expands into the tribe, it, too, 
as merely a large family, becomes the object of 
affection, of patriotic devotion. This is the second 
stage — the stage of the tribe, the clan. In the 
third stage, the tribe has sought protection behind 
the inclosure of walls. It is the age of cities; 
patriotism is the devotion to the city; men are 
Athenians ere Grecians, Romans ere Italians. In 
the next period, patriotism means affection for 
the state, for the county, for the province; and 
Burgundian, Norman and Fleming gave freely of 
their breast-blood for Burgundy, Normandy and 
Flanders; while we of to-day form the latest, but 
not the last, link of the lengthening chain by hon- 
ouring, loving and serving the country above all 
considerations, be they of tribe, or town, or tenure. 
Yet I do not believe this to be the last, the highest, 
the noblest form of patriotism. 

“No,” continued Bab Azzoun, “this develop- 
ment shall go on, ever expanding, ever mounting, 
until, carried upon its topmost crest, we attain to 
that height from which we can look down upon 
the world as our country, humanity as our country- 
men, and he shall be the best patriot who is the 
least patriotic.” 

“Ah-h, fichtre!” exclaimed Santander, listlessly, 
[ 137 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


throwing a cushion at Bab Azzoun’s head; “va te 
coucher. It’s too hot to theorise; you’re either a 
great philosopher, Bab, or a large sized” — he 
looked at him over the rim of his tin cup before 
concluding — “idiot.” 

But Bab Azzoun had gone on talking in the 
meanwhile, and now finishing with “and so you 
must not blame me, if, looking upon them” (he 
meant the Arabs) “and theirs, in this light, I find 
this African campaign a sorry business for France 
to be engaged in, — a vast and powerful govern- 
ment terrorising into submission a horde of half- 
starved fanatics,” he yawned, “all of which is very 
bad — very bad. Give me some more seltzer.” 

We were aroused by the sudden stoppage of the 
scow. A detachment of “Zephyrs,” near us upon 
the right bank, scrambled together in a hollow 
square. A battalion of Coulouglis, with haik and 
houmous rippling, scuttled by us at a gallop, and 
the Twenty-Third Chasseurs d’Afrique in the front 
line halted at an “order” on the crest of a sand 
ridge, which hid the horizon from sight. The 
still, hot air of the Sahara was suddenly pervaded 
with something that roused us to our feet in an 
instant. Thevenot whipped out his ever-ready 
sketch-book and began blocking in the landscape 

[138] 


SON OF A SHEIK 


and the position of the troops, while Santander 
snatched his note-book and stylograph. 

Of the scene which now gathered upon us, I 
can remember little, only out of that dark chaos 
can I rescue a few detached and fragmentary im- 
pressions — all the more vivid, nevertheless, from 
their isolation, all the more distinct from the grey 
blur of the background against which they trace 
themselves. 

Instantly, somewhere disquietingly near, an 
event, or rather a whirl of events that rushed and 
writhed themselves together into a maze of dizzy- 
ing complexity, suddenly evolved and widened like 
the fierce, quick rending open of some vast scroll, 
and there were zigzag hurryings to and fro and 
a surging heavenward of a torrent of noises, noises 
of men and noises of feet, noises of horses and 
noises of arms, noises that hustled fiercely upward 
above the brown mass and closed together in the 
desert air, blending or jarring one with another, 
joining and separating, reuniting and dividing; 
noises that rattled; noises that clanked; noises that 
boomed, or shrilled, or thundered, or quavered. 
And then came sight of blue-grey tumulous cur- 
tains — but whether of smoke or dust, I could not 
say, tumbling and billowing, bellying out with 
[ 139 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


the hot tempest-breath of the battle-demon that 
raged within, and whose outermost fringes were 
torn by serrated files of flashing steel and waver- 
ing ranks of red. 

And this was all at first. I knew we had 
been attacked and that behind those boiling smoke- 
billows, somewhere and somehow, men, infuriated 
into beasts, were grappling and struggling, each 
man, with every sinew on the strain, striving to kill 
his fellow. 

And now we were in the midst of a hollow 
square of our soldiery, yet how we came there I 
cannot recall, though I remember that the water 
of the Jeliffe made my clothes heavy and uncom- 
fortable, although a mortal fear sat upon me of 
being shot down by some of our own frenzied 
soldiers. And then came that awful rib-cracking 
pressure, as, from some outward, unseen cause, 
the square was thrown back upon itself. And with 
it all the smell of sweat of horses, and of men, 
the odour of the powder-smoke, the blinding, suf- 
focating, stupefying clouds of dust, the horrible 
fear, greater than all others, of being pushed down 
beneath those thousands of trampling feet, the 
pitch of excitement that sickens and weakens, the 
momentary consciousness — vanishing as soon as 
c 140] 


SON OF A SHEIK 


felt — that this was what men called “war,” and 
that we were experiencing the reality of what we 
had so often read. 

It was not inspiring; there was no romance, no 
poetry about it; there was nothing in it but the 
hideous jar, one against the other, of men drunk 
# with the blood-lust that eighteen hundred years 
had not quenched. 

I looked at Bab Azzoun; he was standing at the 
gunwale of the scow (somehow we were back on 
the scow again) with an unloaded pistol in his 
hand. He was watching the battle on the bank. 
His nostrils quivered, and he shifted his feet 
exactly like an excited thorough-bred. On a sud- 
den, a trooper of the Eleventh Cuirassiers came 
spinning round and round out of the brown of the 
battle, gulping up blood, and pitched, wheezing, 
face downwards, into the soft ooze where the river 
licked at the bank, raising ruddy bubbles in the 
water as he blew his life-breath in gasps into it, 
and raking it into gridiron patterns as his quiver- 
ing, blue fingers closed into fists. Instantly after- 
ward came a mighty rush across the river beneath 
our very bows. Forty-odd cuirassiers burst into it, 
followed by eighty or a hundred Kabyles. 

I can recall just how the horse-hoofs rattled on 

[ 141 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


the saucer-like cakes of dry mud and flung them 
up in countless fragments behind them. They 
were a fine sight, those Kabyles, with their fierce, 
red horses, their dazzling white bournouses, their 
long, thin, murderous rifle-barrels, thundering and 
splashing past, while from the whole mass of them, 
from under the shadow of every white haik , from 
every black-bearded lip, was rolling their war-cry: 
“Allah, Allah-il-Allah !” 

Some long dormant recollections stirred in Bab 
Azzoun at this old battle-shout. As he faced them 
now, he was no longer the cold, cynical boulevar- 
dier of the morning. He looked as he must have 
looked when he played, a ten year-old boy, about 
the feet of the horses in his father’s black tent. 
He saw the long lines of the douars of his native 
home ; he saw the camels, and the caravan crawling 
toward the sunset; he saw the women grinding 
meal; he saw his father, the bearded sheik; he saw 
the Arab horsemen riding down to battle; he saw 
the palm-broad spear-points and the blue yataghans. 
In an instant of time all the long years of culture 
and education were stripped away as a garment. 
Once more he stood and stepped the Kabyle. And 
with these recollections, his long-forgotten native 
speech came rushing to his tongue, and in a long, 
[ 142] 


SON OF A SHEIK 


shrill cry, he answered his countrymen in their 
own language: 

“Allah-il- Allah, Mohammed ressoul Allah” 

He passed me at a bound, leaped from the scow 
upon the back of a riderless horse, and, mingling 
with the Kabyles, rode out of sight. 

And that was the last I ever saw of Bab Az- 
zoun. 


[ M3] 


A Defense of the Flag 



A Defense of the Flag 


I T had been the celebration of the feast of the 
Holy St. Patrick, and the various Irish socie- 
ties of the city had turned out in great force — 
Sons of Erin, Fenians, Cork Rebels, and all. The 
procession had formed on one of the main avenues 
and had marched and countermarched up and 
down through the American city; had been re- 
viewed by the mayor standing on the steps of the 
City Hall and wearing a green sash; and had 
finally disbanded in the afternoon in the business 
quarter of the city. So that now the streets in 
that vicinity were full of the perspiring members 
of the parade, the emerald colour flashing in and 
out of the slow moving maze of the crowd, like 
strands of green in the warp and woof of a loom. 

There were marshals of the procession, with 
batons and big green rosettes, breathing easily once 
more after the long agony of sitting upon a nervous 
horse that walked sideways. There were the 
occupants of the endless line of carriages, with 
[ 147 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


their green sashes, stretching their cramped and 
stiffened legs. There were the members of the 
various political clubs and secret societies, in their 
one good suit of ready-made clothes, cotton gloves, 
and silver-fringed scarfs. There was the little girl, 
with green tassels on her boots, who had walked 
by her father’s side carrying a set bouquet of cut 
flowers in a lace paper-holder. There was the 
little boy who wore a green high hat, with a pipe 
stuck in the brim, and who carried the water for 
the band; and there were the members of the 
groups upon the floats, with overcoats and sacques 
thrown over their costumes and spangles. 

The men were in great evidence in and around 
the corner saloons talking aloud, smoking, drink- 
ing, and spitting, and calling for “Jim,” or “Con- 
nors,” or “Duffy,” over the heads of the crowd, 
and what with the speeches, and the beer, and the 
frequent fights, and the appropriate damning of 
England and the Orangemen, the day promised to 
end in right spirit and proper mood. 

It so came about that young Shotover, on his 
way to his club, met with one of these groups near 
the City Hall, and noticed that they continually 
looked up towards its dome and seemed very 
well pleased with what they saw there. After he 
[148] 


A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG 


had passed them some little distance, Shotover, 
as well, looked up in that direction and saw that 
the Irish flag was flying from the staff above the 
cupola. 

Shotover was 'American-bred and American- 
born, and his father and mother before him and 
their father and mother before them, and so on 
and back till one brought up in the hold of a ship 
called the Mayflower , further back than which it 
is not necessary to go. 

He never voted. He did not know enough of 
the trend of national politics even to bet on the 
presidential elections. He did not know the names 
of the aldermen of his city, nor how many votes 
were controlled by the leaders of the Dirigo or 
Comanche Clubs; but when he was told that the 
Russian moujik or the Bulgarian serf, who had 
lived for six months in America (long enough for 
their votes to be worth three dollars) , was as much 
of an American citizen as himself, he thought of 
the Schotovers who had framed the constitution in 
’75, had fought for it in ’13 and ’64, and won- 
dered if this were so. He had a strange and 
stubborn conviction that whatever was American 
was right and whatever was right was American, 
and that somehow his country had nothing to be 
[ 149 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


ashamed of in the past, nor afraid of in the future, 
for all the monstrous corruptions and abuses that 
obtained at present. 

But just now this belief had been rudely jarred, 
and he walked on slowly to his club, the blood 
gradually flushing his face .up to the roots of his 
hair. Once there, he sat for a long time in the big 
bay-window, looking absently out into the street, 
with eyes that saw nothing, very thoughtful. All 
at once he took up his hat, clapped it upon his 
head with the air of a man who has made up his 
mind, and went out, turning in the direction of the 
City Hall. 

When he arrived there, no one noticed him, for 
he made it a point to walk with a brisk, determined 
air, as though he were bent upon some especially 
important business, “which I am,” he said to him- 
self as he went on and up through tessellated corri- 
dors, between court-rooms and offices of clerks, 
commissioners, and collectors. 

It was a long time before he found the right 
stairway, which was a circuitous, ladder-like flight 
that wormed its way upward between the two walls 
of the dome. The door leading to the stairway 
was in a kind of garret above the top floor of the 
building proper, and was sandwiched in between 
[150] 


A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG 

coal-bunkers, water-tanks, and gas-meters. Shot- 
over tried it, and found it locked. He swore softly 
to himself, and attempted to break it open. He 
soon concluded that this would make too much 
noise, and so turned about and descended to the 
floor below. A negro, with an immense goitre and 
a black velvet skull-cap, was cleaning the wood- 
work outside a county commissioner’s door. He 
directed Shotover to the porter in the office of the 
Weather Bureau, if he wished to go up in the 
cupola for the view. It was after four by this 
time, and Shotover found the porter of the 
Weather Bureau piling the chairs on the tables and 
sweeping out after office-hours. 

“Well, you see,” said this one, “we don’t allow 
nobody to go up in the cupola. You can get a 
permit from the architect’s office, but I guess they’ll 
be shut up there by now.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Shotover; “I’m leaving 
town to-morrow, and I particularly wanted to get 
the view from the cupola. They say you can see 
well out into the ocean.” 

The porter had ignored him by this time, and 
was sweeping up a great dust. Shotover waited a 
moment. “You don’t think I could arrange to get 

[151] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


up there this afternoon?” he went on. The porter 
did not turn around. 

“We don’t allow no one up there without a 
permit,” he answered. 

“I suppose,” returned Shotover, “that you have 
the keys?” 

No answer. 

“You have the keys, haven’t you — the keys to 
the door there at the foot of the stairs?” 

“We don’t allow no one to go up there without 
a permit. Didn’t you hear me before ?” 

Shotover took a five-dollar gold piece from his 
pocket, laid it on the corner of a desk, and con- 
templated it with reflective sadness. “I’m sorry,” 
he said; “I particularly wanted to see that view 
before I left.” 

“Well, you see,” said the porter, straightening 
up, “there was a young feller jumped off there 
once, and a woman tried to do it a little while 
after, and the officers in the police station down- 
stairs made us shut it up ; but ’s long as you only 
want to see the view and don’t want to jump off, 
I guess it’ll be all right,” and he leaned one hand 
against the edge of the desk and coughed slightly 
behind the other. 

While he had been talking, Shotover had seen 
[ 152] 


A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG 


between the two windows on the opposite side of 
the room a very large wooden rack full of pigeon- 
holes and compartments : The weather and signal- 
flags were tucked away in these, but on the top 
was a great folded pile of bunting. It was sooty 
and grimy, and the new patches in it showed vio- 
lently white and clean. But Shotover saw, with a 
strange and new catch at the heart, that it was 
tri-coloured. 

“If you will come along with me now, sir,” said 
the porter, “I’ll open the door for you.” 

Shotover let him go out of the room first, then 
jumped to the other side of the room, snatched the 
flag down, and, hiding it as best he could, followed 
him out of the room. They went up the stairs 
together. If the porter saw anything, he was wise 
enough to keep quiet about it. 

“I won’t bother about waiting for you,” said 
he, as he swung the door open. “Just lock the 
door when you come down, and leave the key 
with me at the office. If I ain’t there, just give 
it to the fellow at the news-stand on the first floor, 
and I can get it in the morning.” 

“All right,” answered Shotover, “I will,” and 
he hugged the flag close to him, going up the nar- 
row stairs two at a time. 

[ 153 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


After a long while he came out on the narrow 
railed balcony that ran around the lantern, and 
paused for breath as he looked around and below 
him. Then he turned quite giddy and sick for a 
moment and clutched desperately at the hand-rail, 
resisting a strong impulse to sit down and close his 
eyes. 

Seemingly insecure as a bubble, the great dome 
rolled away from him on all sides down to the but- 
tresses around the drum, and below that the gulf 
seemed endless, stretching down, down, down, to 
the thin yellow ribbon of the street. Underneath 
him, the City Hall itself dropped away, a confused 
heap of tinned roofs, domes, chimneys, and cor- 
nices, and beyond that lay the city itself spreading 
out like a great gray map. Over it there hung a 
greasy, sooty fog of a dark-brown color. In places 
the higher buildings over-topped the fog. Here, 
it was pierced by a slender church-spire. In an- 
other place, a dome bulged up over it, or, again, 
some sky-scraping office-building shouldered itself 
above its level to the purer, cleaner air. Looking 
down at the men in the streets, Shotover could see 
only their feet moving back and forth underneath 
their hat-brims as they walked. The noises of the 
city reached him in a subdued and steady murmur, 
[ 154 ] 


A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG 


and the strong wind that was blowing brought him 
the smell of the vegetable-gardens in the suburbs, 
the odour of trees and hay from the more distant 
country, and occasionally a faint whiff of salt from 
the ocean. 

The sight was a sort of inspiration to Shotover. 
The great American city, with its riches and re- 
sources, boiling with the life and energy of a new 
people, young, enthusiastic, ambitious, and so full 
of hope and promise for the future, all striving 
and struggling in the fore part of the march of 
empire, building a new nation, a new civilisation, 
a new world, while over it all floated the Irish 
flag. 

Shotover turned back, seized the halyards, and 
brought the green banner down with a single move- 
ment of his arm. Then he knotted the other 
bundle of bunting to the cords and ran it up. As 
it reached the top, the bundle twisted, turned on 
itself, unfolded, suddenly caught the wind, and 
then, in a single, long billow, rolled out into the 
stars and bars of Old Glory. 

Shotover shut his teeth against a cheer, and the 
blood went tingling up and down through his 
body to his very finger-tips. He looked up, lean- 
ing his hand against the mast, and felt it quiver 
[ 155 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

and thrill as the great flag tugged at it. The sound 
of the halyards rattling and snapping came to his 
ears like music. 

He was not ashamed then to be enthusiastic, and 
did not feel in the least melodramatic or absurd. 
He took off his hat, and, as the great flag grew 
out stiffer and snapped and strained in the wind, 
looked up at it and said over softly to himself: 
“Lexington, Valley Forge, Yorktown, Mexico, the 
Alamo, 1812, Gettysburg, Shiloh, the Wilder- 
ness.” 

Meanwhile the knot of people on the sidewalk 
below, that had watched his doings, had grown 
into a crowd. The green badge was upon every 
breast, and there came to his ears a sound that was 
out of chord with the minor drone, the worst sound 
in the human gamut, the sound of an angry mob. 

The high, windy air and the excitement of the 
occasion began to tell on Shotover, so that when 
half an hour later there came a rush of many feet 
up the stairway, and a crash upon the door that 
led up to the lantern, he buttoned his coat tightly 
around him, and shut his teeth and fists. 

When the door finally went down and the first 
man jumped in, Shotover hit him. 

Terence Shannon told about this afterward. “It 
[156] 


A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG 


was a birdie. Ah, but say, y’ ought to of seen um. 
He let go with his left, like de piston-rod of de 
engine wot broke loose dat time at de power-house, 
an’ Duffy’s had an eye like a fried egg iver since.” 

The crowd paused, partly through surprise and 
partly because the body of Mr. Duffy lay across 
their feet and barred their way. There were about 
a dozen of them all, more or less drunk. The one 
exception was Terence Shannon, who was the can- 
didate of the boss of his ward for a number on the 
force. In view of this fact, Shannon was trying 
to preserve order. He took advantage of the 
moment of hesitation to step in between Shotover 
and the crowd. 

“Aw, say, youse fellows rattle me slats, sure. 
Do yer think the City Hall is the place to scrap, 
wid the jug only two floors below? Ye’ll be 
havin’ the whole shootin’-match of the force up 
here in a minute. Maybe yer would like to sober 
up in the ‘hole in the wall.’ Now just pipe 
down quiet-like, an’ swear um in reg’lar at the 
station-house down-stairs. Ye’ve got a straight 
disturbin’-the-peace case wid um. Ah, sure, 
straight goods. I ain’t givin’ yer no gee-hee.” 

But the crowd stood its ground and glared at 
Shotover over Shannon’s head. Then Connors 
[ 157 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


yelled and drew out his revolver. “B’yes, we’ve 
got a right,” he exclaimed. “It’s the boord av 
alderman gave us the permit to show the green 
flag of ould Ireland here to-day. It’s him as is 
breaking the law, not we, confound you.” (“Con- 
found you” was not what Mr. Connors said) . 

“He’s dead on,” said Shannon, turning to Shot- 
over. “It’s all ye kin do. Yer’re actin’ agin the 
law.” 

Shotover did not answer, but breathed hard 
through his nose, wondering at the state of things 
that made it an offense against the American law 
to protect the American flag. But all at once 
Shannon passed him and drew his knife across the 
halyards, and the great flag collapsed and sank 
slowly down like a wounded eagle. The crowd 
cheered, and Shannon said in Shotover’s ear: 
“ ’Twas to save yer life, me b’y. They’re out for 
blood, sure.” 

“Now,” said Connors, using several altogether 
impossible nouns and adjectives, “now run up the 
green flag of ould Ireland again, or ye’ll be sorry,” 
and he pointed his revolver at Shotover. 

“Say,” cried Shannon, in a low voice to Shot- 
over — “say, he’s dead stuck on doin’ you dirt. I 
can’t hold um. Aw, say, Connors, quit your fool- 
[158] 


A DEFENSE OF THE FLAG 


in’, will you; put up your flashbox — put it up, or — 
or — ” But just here he broke off, and catching up 
the green flag, threw it out in front of Shotover, 
and cried, laughing, “Ye’ll not have the heart to 
shoot now.” 

Shotover struck the flag to the ground, set his 
foot on it, and catching up Old Glory again, flung 
it round him and faced them, shouting: 

“Now shoot!” 

But at this, in genuine terror, Shannon flung his 
hat down and ran in front of Connors himself, 
fearfully excited, and crying out: “F’r Gawd’s sake, 
Connors, you don’t dast do it. Wake up, will yer, 
it’s mornin’. Do yer want to hiv’ us all jugged 
for twenty years? It’s treason and rebellion, and 
I don’t now what all, for every mug in the gang, 
if yer just so much as crook dat forefinger. Put 
it up, ye damned fool. This is a cat w’at has 
changed colour.” 

Something of the gravity of the situation had 
forced its way through the clogged minds of the 
others, and, as Shannon spoke the last words, Con- 
nors’s fore-arm was knocked up and he himself 
was pulled back into the crowd. 

You can not always foretell how one man is 
going to act, but it is easy to read the intentions of 
[ 159 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


a crowd. Shotover saw a rush in the eyes of the 
circle that was contracting about him, and turned 
to face the danger and to fight for the flag as the 
Shotovers of the old days had so often done. 

In the books, the young aristocrat invariably 
thrashes the clowns who set upon him. But some- 
how Shotover had no chance with his clowns at all. 
He hit out wildly into the air as they ran in, and 
tried to guard against the scores of fists. But their 
way of fighting was not that which he had learned 
at his athletic club. They kicked him in the 
stomach, and, when they had knocked him down, 
stamped upon his face. It is hard to feel like a 
martyr and a hero when you can’t draw your 
breath and when your mouth is full of blood and 
dust and broken teeth. Accordingly Shotover gave 
it up, and fainted away. 

When the officers finally arrived, they made no 
distinction between the -combatants, but locked 
them all up under the charge of “Drunk and Dis- 
orderly.” 


[ 160 ] 


Toppan 



Toppan 


W HEN Frederick Woodhouse Toppan 
came out of Thibet and returned to the 
world in general and to San Francisco 
in particular, he began to know what it meant to 
be famous. As he entered street cars and hotel 
elevators he remarked a sudden observant silence 
on the part of the other passengers. The re- 
porters became a real instead of a feigned annoy- 
ance and the papers at large commenced speaking 
of him by his last name only. He ceased to cut 
out and paste in his scrap-book, everything that 
was said of him in the journals and magazines. 
People composed beforehand clever little things 
to say to him when they were introduced, and he 
was asked to indorse new soaps and patented 
cereals. The great magazines of the country 
wrote to him for more articles, and his “Through 
the Highlands of Thibet”, already in its fiftieth 
thousand, was in everybody’s hands. 

And he was hardly thirty. 

To people who had preconceived ideas as to 
[ 163] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


what an Asiatic explorer should be like, Toppan 
was disappointing. Where they expected to see 
a “magnificent physique” in top boots and pith 
helmet, flung at length upon lion skins, smoking 
a nargile, they saw only a very much tanned young 
gentleman, who wore a straw hat and russet 
leather shoes just like any well dressed man of 
the period. They felt vaguely defrauded because 
he looked ordinary and stylish and knew what to 
do with his hands and feet in a drawing-room. 

He had come to San Francisco for three reasons. 
First because at that place he was fitting out an 
expedition for Kamtchatka which was to be the 
big thing of his life, and cause him to be spoken 
of together with Speke, Nansen and Stanley; second 
because the manager of the lecture bureau with 
whom he had signed, had scheduled him to deliver 
his two lectures there, as he had already done in 
Boston, New York, and elsewhere; and, third be- 
cause Victoria Boyden lived there. 

When Toppan got back, the rest of Victoria’s 
men friends shrank considerably when she com- 
pared them with Toppan. They were of the 
type who are in the insurance offices of fathers and 
uncles during the winter, and in the summer are 
to be found at the fashionable resorts, where they 
[164] 


TOPPAN 


idle languidly on the beaches in white flannels or 
play “chopsticks” with the girls on the piano in the 
hotel parlors. Here, however, was the first white 
man who had ever crossed Thibet alive, who 
knew what it meant to go four days without 
water and who could explain to you the dif- 
ference between the insanity caused by the lack 
of sleep and that brought about by a cobra-bite. 
The men of Victoria’s acquaintance never had 
known what it was to go without two consecutive 
meals, whereas Toppan at one time in the Him- 
alayas had lived for several weeks upon ten ounces 
of camel meat per day, after the animals had died 
under their burdens. Victoria’s friends led ger- 
mans, Toppan led expeditions; their only fatigue 
came from dancing. Upon one occasion on Mount 
Everest, Toppan and his companions, caught in a 
snow-storm where sleep meant death, had kept 
themselves awake by chewing pipe-tobacco, and 
rubbing the smarting juice in their eyes. He had 
had experiences, the like of which none other of 
her gentlemen friends had ever known and she had 
cared for him from the first. 

When a man tells a girl that he loves her in a 
voice that can speak in the dialects of the interior 
Thibetan states around the Tengrinor lake, or 

[165] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

holds her hand in one that has been sunken deep 
in the throat of a hunger-mad tiger, she cannot 
well be otherwise than duly impressed. 

To look at, Victoria was a queen. Just the 
woman you would have chosen to be mated with a 
man like Toppan, five feet eleven in her tennis 
shoes, with her head flung well back on her shoul- 
ders, and the gait of a goddess; she could look 
down on most men and in general suggested figures 
of Brunehilde, Boadicea, or Berenice. But to 
know her was to find her shallow as a sun-shrunken 
mill-race, to discover that her brilliancy was the 
cheapest glitter, and to realise that in every way 
she was lamentably unsuited for the role of Top- 
pan’s wife. And no one saw this so well as 
Toppan himself. He knew that she did not ap- 
preciate him at one-tenth his real value, that she 
never could and never would understand him, and 
that he was in every way too good for her. 

As his wife he felt sure she would only be a 
hindrance and a stumbling-block in the career that 
he had planned for himself, if, indeed she did not 
ruin it entirely. 

But first impressions were strong with him, and 
because when he had first known her she had 
seemed to be fit consort for an emperor, he had 
[166] 


TOPPAN 


gone on loving her as such ever since, making 
excuses for her trivialities, her petty affectations, 
her lack of interest in his life work, and even at 
times her unconcealed ridicule of it. For one thing, 
Victoria wanted him to postpone his expedition 
for a year, in order that he might marry her, and 
Toppan objected to this because he was so circum- 
stanced just then that to postpone meant to aban- 
don it. 

No man is stronger than his weakest point. 
Toppan’s weak point was Victoria Boyden, and 
he acknowledged to himself with a good deal of 
humiliation that he could not make up his mind 
to break with her. Perhaps he is not to be too 
severely blamed for this. Living so much apart 
from women as he did and plunged for such long 
periods into an atmosphere so entirely different 
from that of ordinary society, he had come to feel 
intensely where he felt at all, and had lost the 
faculty possessed by the more conventional, of easy 
and ephemeral change from one interest to an- 
other. Most of Victoria’s admirers in a like case, 
would have lit a cigarette and walked off the pas- 
sion between dawn and dark in one night. But 
Toppan could not do this. It was the one weak 
strain in his build, “the little rift within the lute.” 
[ 167] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


One of the natural consequences of their inter- 
course was that they were never happy together 
and hailed with hardly concealed relief the advent 
of a third person. They had absolutely no in- 
terests in common, and their meetings were made 
up of trivial bickerings. They generally parted 
quarrelling, and then immediately sat down to 
count the days until they should meet again. I 
have no doubt they loved each other well enough, 
but somehow they were not made to be mated — 
and that was all there was about it. 

During the month before the Kamtchatka ex- 
pedition sailed Toppan worked hard. He com- 
manded jointly with Bushby, a lieutenant in the 
Civil Engineer Corps, and the two toiled from the 
dawn of one morning till the dawn of the next, 
perfecting the last details of their undertaking; 
correcting charts, lading rifles and ammunition, 
experimenting with beef extracts and pemmican, 
and corresponding with geographical societies. 

Through it all Toppan found time to revise his 
notes for his last lecture, and to call upon Victoria 
twice a week. 

On one of these occasions he said; “How do 
you get on with my book, Vic, pretty stupid read- 
[168] 


TOPPAN 


ing?” He had sent her from Bombay the first 
copy that his London publishers had forwarded to 
him. 

“Not at all,” she answered, “I like it very much, 
do you know it has all the fascination of a novel 
for me. Your style is just as clear and strong as 
can be, and your descriptions of scenery and the 
strange and novel bits of human nature in such 
an unfrequented corner of the globe are much more 
interesting than the most imaginative and carefully 
elaborated fiction; those botanical and zoological 
data must be invaluable to scientific men, I should 
think; but of course I can’t understand them very 
well. How do you do it, Fred? It is certainly 
very wonderful. One would think that you were 
a born writer as well as explorer. But now see 
here, Freddy; I want to talk to you again about 
putting off your trip to — what do you call it — for 
just a year, for my sake.” 

After they had wrangled over this oft-mooted 
question they parted coldly, and Toppan went 
away feeling aroused and unhappy. 

That night he and Bushby were making a chemi- 
cal analysis of a new kind of smokeless powder. 
Bushby poured out a handful of saltpeter and 
charcoal upon a leaf torn from a back number of 
[ 169] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


the Scientific Weekly and slid it across the table 
towards him. “Now when you burn this stuff,” 
remarked Toppan, spreading it out upon the table 
with his finger, “you get a reaction of 2KN0 3 + 
3C=C0 2 +CO+, I forget the rest. Get out your 
formulae in the bookcase there behind you, will 
you, and look it up for me?” 

While Bushby was fingering the leaves of the 
volume, Toppan caught sight of his name on the 
leaf of the Scientific Weekly which held the mix- 
ture. Looking closely he saw that it occurred in a 
criticism of his book which he had not yet seen. 
He brushed the charcoal and saltpeter to one side 
and ran his eyes over the lines : 

“Toppan’s great work,” said the writer, “is a 
book not only for the scientist but for all men. 
Though dealing to a great extent with the techni- 
calities of geography, geology, and the sister 
sciences, the author has known how to throw his 
thoughts and observations into a form of remark- 
able lightness and brilliancy. In Toppan’s hands 
the book has all the fascination of a novel. His 
style is clear and strong, and his descriptions of 
scenery, and of the weird and unusual phases of 
human nature to be met with in such an unfre- 
quented corner of the globe are much more interest- 

[ 170] 


TOPPAN 


ing than most of the imaginative and carefully 
elaborated romances of adventure in the present 
day. His botanical and zoological data will be 
invaluable to scientific men. It is rare we find the 
born explorer a born writer as well.” 

As he read, Toppan’s heart grew cold within his 
ribs. “She must have learnt it like a parrot,” he 
mused. “I wonder if she even” — 

“Equals C0 2 +C0+N 3 +KC0 3 ,” said Bushby 
turning to the table again, “come on, old man, 
hurry up and let’s get through with this. It’s 
nearly three o’clock.” 

The next evening Toppan was to deliver his 
lecture at the Grand Opera House, but in the after- 
noon he called upon Victoria with a purpose. She 
was out at the time but he determined to wait for 
her, and sat down in the drawing-room until she 
should come. Presently he saw his book with its 
marbled cover — familiar to him now as the face 
of a child to its father, — lying conspicuously upon 
the center table. It was the copy he had mailed to 
her from Bombay. He picked it up and ran over 
the leaves; not one of them had been cut. He 
replaced the book upon the table and left the 
house. 

That night the Grand Opera House was packed 

[ 171 1 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


to the doors and the street in front was full of 
hoarse, over-worked policemen and wailing coach- 
men. The awning was out over the sidewalk and 
the steps of the church across the street were 
banked with row upon row of watching faces. It 
was known that this was to be the last lecture of 
Toppan’s before he plunged into the wilderness 
again, and that the world would not see him for 
five years. The mayor of the city introduced him 
in a speech that was too long, and then Toppan 
stood up and faced the artillery of opera-glasses, 
and tried not to look into the right-hand proscenium 
box that held Victoria Boyden and her party. 

He kept the audience spell-bound for an hour, 
while he forgot his useless notes, forgot his hearers 
and the circumstances of time and place, forgot 
about Victoria Boyden and their mean little squab- 
bles and remembered only that he was Toppan, the 
great explorer, who had led his men through the 
interior of Thibet, and had lived to tell it to these 
people now before him. For an hour he made the 
people too, forget themselves in him and his story, 
till they felt something of what he had felt on those 
occasions when Hope was a phantom scattering 
chaff, when Resolve wore thin under friction of 
disaster, when the wheels of Life ran very low and 
[ 172] 


TOPPAN 


men thanked God that they could die. For an 
hour he led them steadily into the heart of the 
unknown : the twilight of the unseen. Then he had 
an inspiration. 

He had worked himself up to a mood wherein 
he was himself at his very best, when his chosen 
life-work made all else seem trivial and the desire 
to do great things was big within him. In this 
mood he somehow happened to remember Victoria 
Boyden, which he should not have done because she 
was not to be thought of in connection with great 
deeds and high resolves. But just at that moment 
Toppan felt his strength and knew how great he 
really was, and how small and belittled she seemed 
in comparison. She had practiced a small decep- 
tion upon him, had done him harm and would do 
him more. He suddenly resolved to break with her 
at that very moment and place while he was strong 
and able to do it. 

He did it by cleverly working into his talk a 
little story whose real meaning no one but Victoria 
understood. For the audience it was but a bright 
little bit of folk-lore of upper India. For Victoria, 
he might as well have struck her across the face. 
It was cruel; it was even vulgarly cruel, which is 
brutal, it was vindictive and perhaps cowardly, but 
[i73] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


the man was smarting under a long continued bit- 
terness and he had at last turned and with closed 
eyes struck back savagely. 

The exalted mood which had brought this about, 
was with him during the rest of the evening, was 
with him when he drove back to his rooms in his 
coupe with Bushby, and was with him as he flung 
himself to bed and went to sleep with a deep sigh 
of relief for that it was now over and done with 
forever. 

But it left him during the night and he awoke 
the next morning to a realisation of what he had 
done and of all he had lost. He began by re- 
membering Victoria as he had first known her, by 
recalling only what was good in her, and by palli- 
ating all that was bad. From this starting point 
he went on till he was in an agony of grief and 
remorse and ended by lashing himself into the 
belief that Victoria had been his inspiration and 
had given zest and interest to every thing he had 
done. Now he bitterly regretted that he had 
thrown her over. He had never in his life before 
loved her so much. He was unfitted for work 
during all that day and passed the next night in 
unavailing lamentations. His morning’s mail 
brought him face to face with the crisis of his life. 

[ 174 ] 


TOPPAN 


It came in the shape of a letter from Victoria 
Boyden. 

It was a very thick and a very heavy letter and 
she must have spent most of the previous day in 
writing it. He was surprised that she should have 
written him at all after what had passed on that 
other evening, but he was deeply happy as well 
because he knew precisely what the letter would be, 
before he opened it. It would be a petition for his 
forgiveness and a last attempt to win him back to 
her again. 

And Toppan knew that she would succeed. He 
knew that in his present mood he would make any 
sacrifice for her sake. He foresaw that her appeal 
would be too strong for him. That was, if he 
opened and read her letter. Just now the question 
was, should he do it? If he read that letter he 
knew that he was lost, his career would stop where 
it was. To be great he had only to throw it un- 
opened into the fire ; yes, but to be great without 
her, was it worth the while? What would fame 
and honour and greatness be, without her? He 
realised that the time had come to choose between 
her and his career and that it all depended upon 
the opening of her letter. Two hours later, he 
flung himself down before his table and took her 
[ 175 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


letter in his hand. His fingers itched for the touch 
of it. Close to his elbow lay a little copper knife 
with poison grooves, such as are used by the Hill- 
tribes in the Kuen-Lun mountains. Toppan kept it 
for a paper cutter; just now he picked it up. For a 
long time he remained sitting, holding Victoria’s 
letter in one hand, the little knife in the other. 
Then he put the point under the flap of the envelope 
and slowly cut it open. 

Two weeks later the Kamtchatka Expedition 
sailed with Bushby in command. Toppan did not 
go; he was married to Victoria Boyden that Fall. 

Last season I met Toppan at Coronado Beach. 
The world has about forgotten him now, but he is 
quite content as he is. He is head clerk in old Mr. 
Boyden’s insurance office and he plays a capital 
game of tennis. 


[176] 








■ /> l|ll««M— — «■<; 

A Caged Lion 






























$ 





A Caged Lion 


I N front of the entrance a “spieler” stood on 
a starch-box and beat upon a piece of tin 
with a stick, and we weakly succumbed to his 
frenzied appeals and went inside. We did this, I 
am sure, partly to please the “spieler,” who would 
have been dreadfully disappointed if we had not 
done so, but partly, too, to please Toppan, who 
was always interested in the great beasts and liked 
to watch them. 

It is possible that you may remember Toppan 
as the man who married Victoria Boyden, and, in 
so doing, thrust his greatness from him and became 
a bank clerk instead of an explorer. After he 
married, he came to be quite ashamed of what he 
had done in Thibet and Africa and other unknown 
corners of the earth, and, after a while, very 
seldom spoke of that part of his life at all; or, 
when he did, it was only to allude to it as a passing 
boyish fancy, altogether foolish and silly, like calf- 
love and early attempts at poetry. 

“I used to think I was going to set the world 
[ 179 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


on fire at one time,” he said once; “I suppose 
every young fellow has some such ideas. I only 
made an ass of myself, and I’m glad I’m well out 
of it. Victoria saved me from that.” 

But this was long afterward. He died hard, 
and sometimes he would have moments of strength 
in his weakness, just as before he had given up his 
career during a moment of weakness in his 
strength. During the first years after he had given 
up his career, he thought he was content with the 
way things had come to be ; but it was not so, and 
now and then the old feeling, the love of the old 
life, the old ambition, would be stirred into activity 
again by some sight, or sound, or episode in the 
conventional life around him. A chance paragraph 
in a newspaper, a sight of the Arizona deserts of 
sage and cactus, a momentary panic on a ferry- 
boat, sometimes even fine music or a great poem 
would wake the better part of him to the desire 
of doing great things. At such times the longing 
grew big and troublous within him to cut loose 
from it all and get back to those places of the earth 
where there were neither months nor years, and 
where tfye days of the week had no names; where 
he could feel unknown winds blowing against his 
face and unnamed mountains rising beneath his 
[180] 


A CAGED LION 


feet ; where he could see great sandy, stony 
stretches of desert with hot, blue shadows, and 
plains of salt, and thickets of jungle-grass, broken 
only by the lairs of beasts and the paths the stein- 
bok make when they go down to water. 

The most trifling thing would recall all this to 
him, just as a couple of notes have recalled to you 
whole arias and overtures. But with Toppan it 
was as though one had recalled the arias and the 
overtures and then was not allowed to sing them. 

We went into the arena and sat down. The 
ring in the middle was fenced in by a great, circu- 
lar iron cage. The tiers of seats rose around this, 
a band was playing in a box over the entrance, 
and the whole interior was lighted by an electric 
globe slung over the middle of the cage. 

Inside the cage a brown bear — to’ me less sug- 
gestive of a wild animal than of lap-robes and 
furriers’ signs — -was dancing sleepily and allowing 
himself to be prodded by a person whose celluloid 
standing-collar showed white at the neck above 
the green of his Tyrolese costume. The bear was 
mangy, and his steel muzzle had chafed him, and 
Toppan said he was corrupted of moth and rust 
alike, and the audience applauded but feebly when 
he and his keeper withdrew. 

[181] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


After this we had a clown-elephant, dressed in 
a bib and tucker and vast baggy breeches — like 
those of a particularly big French Turco — who 
had lunch with his keeper, and rang the bell and 
drank his wine and wiped his mouth with a hand- 
kerchief like a bed-quilt, and pulled the chair from 
underneath his companion, seeming to be amused 
at it all with a strange sort of suppressed elephan- 
tine mirth. 

And then, after they had both made their bow 
and gone out, in bounded and tumbled the dogs, 
barking and grinning all over, jumping up on their 
stools and benches, wriggling and pushing one 
another about, giggling and excited like so many 
kindergarten children on a show-day. I am sure 
they enjoyed their performance as much as the 
audience did, for they never had to be told what 
to do, and seemed only too eager for their turn 
to come. The best of it all was that they were 
quite unconscious of the audience and appeared to 
do their tricks for the sake of the tricks themselves, 
and not for the applause which followed them. 
And then, after the usual programme of wicker 
cylinders, hoops, and balls was over, they all 
rushed off amid a furious scrattling of paws and 
filliping of tails and heels. 

[182] 


A CAGED LION 

While this was going on, we had been hearing 
from time to time a great sound, half-whine, half- 
rumbling guttural cough, that came from some- 
where behind the exit from the cage. It was 
repeated at rapidly decreasing intervals, and grew 
lower in pitch until it ended in a short bass grunt. 
It sounded cruel and menacing, and when at its 
full volume the wood of the benches under us 
thrilled and vibrated. 

There was a little pause in the programme 
while the arena was cleared and new and much 
larger and heavier paraphernalia was set about, 
and a gentleman in a frock coat and a very 
shiny hat entered and announced “the world’s 
greatest lion-tamer.” Then he went away and the 
tamer came in and stood expectantly by the side 
of the entrance, there was another short wait and 
the band struck a long minor chord. 

And then they came in, one after the other, with 
long, crouching, lurching strides, not at all good- 
humouredly, like the dogs, or the elephant, or 
even the bear, but with low-hanging heads, surly, 
watchful, their eyes gleaming with the rage and 
hate that burned in their hearts and that they 
dared not vent. Their loose, yellow hides rolled 
and rippled over the great muscles as they moved, 

[183] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


and the breath coming from their hot, half-open 
mouths turned to steam as it struck the air. 

A huge, blue-painted see-saw was dragged out 
to the centre, and the tamer made a sharp sound 
of command. Slowly, and with twitching tails, 
two of them obeyed and clambering upon the 
balancing-board swung up and down, while the 
music played a see-saw waltz. And all the while 
their great eyes flamed with the detestation of the 
thing and their black upper lips curled away from 
their long fangs in protest of this hourly renewed 
humiliation and degradation. 

And one of the others, while waiting his turn 
to be whipped and bullied, sat up on his haunches 
and faced us and looked far away beyond us over 
the heads of the audience — over the continent and 
ocean, as it were — as though he saw something 
in that quarter that made him forget his present 
surroundings. 

“You grand old brute,” muttered Toppan; and 
then he said: “Do you know what you would see 
if you were to look into his eyes now? You 
would see Africa, and unnamed mountains, and 
great stony stretches of desert, with hot blue 
shadows, and plains of salt, and lairs in the jungle- 
grass, and lurking places near the paths the stein- 
[184] 


A CAGED LION 


bok make when they go down to water. But now 
he’s hampered and caged — is there anything worse 
than a caged lion? — and kept from the life he 
loves and was made for” — just here the tamer 
spoke sharply to him, and his eyes and crest 
drooped — “and ruled over,” concluded Toppan, 
“by some one who is not so great as he, who has 
spoiled what was best in him and has turned his 
powers to trivial, resultless uses — some one weaker 
than he, yet stronger. Ah, well, old brute, it was 
yours once, we will remember that.” 

They wheeled out a clumsy velocipede, built 
expressly for him, and, while the lash whistled and 
snapped about him, the conquered king heaved 
himself upon it and went around and around the 
ring, while the band played a quick-step, the audi- 
ence broke into applause, and the tamer smirked 
and bobbed his well-oiled head. I thought of Sam- 
son performing for the Philistines and Thusnelda 
at the triumph of Germanicus. The great beasts, 
grand though conquered, seemed to be the only 
dignified ones in the whole business. I hated the 
audience who saw their shame from behind iron 
bars; I hated myself for being one of them; and 
I hated the smug, sniggering tamer. 

This latter had been drawing out various stools 

[185] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


and ladders, and now arranged the lions upon 
them so they should form a pyramid, with himself 
on top. 

Then he swung himself up among them, with 
his heels upon their necks, and, taking hold of 
the jaws of one, wrenched them apart with a great 
show of strength, turning his head to the audience 
so that all should see. 

And just then the electric light above him 
cackled harshly, guttered, dropped down to a 
pencil of dull red, then went out, and the place was 
absolutely dark. 

The band stopped abruptly with a discord, and 
there was an instant of silence. Then we heard 
the stools and ladders clattering as the lions leaped 
down, and straightway four pairs of lambent green 
spots burned out of the darkness and traveled 
swiftly about here and there, crossing and re- 
crossing one another like the lights of steamers in 
a storm. Heretofore, the lions had been sluggish 
and inert; now they were aroused and alert in an 
instant, and we could hear the swift pad-pad of 
their heavy feet as they swung around the arena 
and the sound of their great bodies rubbing against 
the bars of the cage as one and the other passed 
nearer to us. 


[186] 


A CAGED LION 


I don’t the think the audience at all appreciated 
the situation at first, for no one moved or seemed 
excited, and one shrill voice suggested that the 
band should play “When the electric lights go 
out.” 

“Keep perfectly quiet, please!” called the tamer 
out of the darkness, and a certain peculiar ring in 
his voice was the first intimation of a possible 
danger. 

But Toppan knew; and as we heard the tamer 
fumbling for the catch of the gate, which he some- 
how could not loose in the darkness, he said, with 
a rising voice: “He wants to get that gate open 
pretty quick.” 

But for their restless movements the lions were 
quiet; they uttered no sound, which was a bad 
sign. Blinking and dazed by the garish blue 
whiteness of a few moments before, they could 
see perfectly now where the tamer was 
blind. 

“Listen,” said Toppan. Near to us, and on the 
inside of the cage, we could hear a sound as of 
some slender body being whisked back and forth 
over the surface of the floor. In an instant I 
guessed what it was; one of the lions was crouched 
there, whipping his sides with his tail. 

[i%] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“When he stops that he’ll spring,” said Toppan, 
excitedly. 

“Bring a light, Jerry — quick!” came the tamer’s 
voice. 

People were clambering to their feet by this 
time, talking loud, and we heard a woman cry out. 

“Please keep as quiet as possible, ladies and 
gentlemen!” cried the tamer; “it won’t do to ex- 
cite — ” 

From the direction of the voice came the sound 
of a heavy fall and a crash that shook the iron 
gratings in their sockets. 

“He’s got him!” shouted Toppan. 

And then what a scene ! In that thick darkness 
every one sprang up, stumbling over the seats and 
over each other, all shouting and crying out, sud- 
denly stricken with a panic fear of something they 
could not see. Inside the barred death-trap every 
lion suddenly gave tongue at once, until the air 
shook and sang in our ears. We could hear the 
great cats hurling themselves against the bars, and 
could see their eyes leaving brassy streaks against 
the darkness as they leaped. Two more sprang 
as the first had done toward that quarter of the 
cage from which came sounds of stamping and 
struggling, and then the tamer began to scream. 

[ 1 88 ] 


A CAGED LION 


I think that so long as I shall live I shall not 
forget the sound of the tamer’s scream. He did 
not scream as a woman would have done, from 
the head, but from the chest, which sounded so 
much worse that I was sick from it in a second with 
that sickness that weakens one at the pit of the 
stomach and along the muscles at the back of the 
legs. He did not pause for a second. Every 
breath was a scream, and every scream was alike, 
and one heard through it all the long snarls of 
satisfied hate and revenge, muffled by the man’s 
clothes and the rip, rip of the cruel, blunt claws. 

Hearing it all in the dark, as we did, made it all 
the more dreadful. I think for a time I must have 
taken leave of my senses. I was ready to vomit 
for the sickness that was upon me, and I beat my 
hands raw upon the iron bars or clasped them over 
my ears against the sounds of the dreadful thing 
that was doing behind them. I remember praying 
aloud that it might soon be over, so only those 
screams might be stopped. 

It seemed as though it had gone on for hours, 
when some men rushed in with a lantern and long, 
sharp irons. A hundred voices cried: “Here he 
is, over here!” and they ran around outside the 
cage and threw the light of the lantern on a place 
[189] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


where a heap of grey, gold-laced clothes writhed 
and twisted beneath three great bulks of fulvous 
hide and bristling black mane. 

The irons were useless. The three furies 
dragged their prey out of their reach and crouched 
over it again and recommenced. No one dared to 
go into the cage, and still the man lived and 
struggled and screamed. 

I saw Toppan’s fingers go to his mouth, and 
through that medley of dreadful noises there issued 
a sound that, sick as I was, made me shrink anew 
and close my eyes and teeth and shudder as though 
some cold slime had been poured through the 
hollow of my bones where the marrow should be. 
It was as the noise of the whistling of a fine whip- 
lash, mingled with the whirr of a locust magnified 
a hundred times, and ended in an abrupt clacking 
noise thrice repeated. 

At once I remembered where I had heard it 
before, because, having once heard the hiss of an 
aroused and angry serpent, no child of Eve can 
ever forget it. 

The sound that now came from between Top- 
pan’s teeth and that filled the arena from wall to 
wall, was the sound that Fhad heard once before 
in the Paris Jardin des Plantes at feeding-time — 
[ 190] 


A CAGED LION 


the sound made by the great constrictors, when 
their huge bodies are looped and coiled like a 
reata for the throw that never misses, that never 
relaxes, and that no beast of the field is built strong 
enough to withstand. All the filthy wickedness 
and abominable malice of the centuries since the 
Enemy first entered into that shape that crawls, 
was concentrated in that hoarse, whistling hiss — 
a hiss that was cold and piercing like an icicle- 
made sound. It was not loud, but had in it some 
sort of penetrating quality that cut through the 
waves of horrid sounds about us, as the snake- 
carved prow of a Viking galley might have cut 
its way through the tumbling eddies of a tide-rip. 

At the second repetition the lions paused. None 
better than they knew what was the meaning of 
that hiss. They had heard it before in their native 
hunting-grounds in the earlier days of summer, 
when the first heat lay close over all the jungle like 
the hollow of the palm of an angry god. Or if 
they themselves had not heard it, their sires before 
them had, and the fear of the thing bred into 
their bones suddenly leaped to life at the sound 
and gripped them and held them close. 

When for a third tffne the sound sung and 
shrilled in their ears, their heads drew between 

[ 191 1 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

their shoulders, their great eyes grew small and 
glittering, the hackles rose, and stiffened on their 
backs, their tails drooped, and they backed slowly 
to the further side of the cage and cowered there, 
whining and beaten. 

Toppan wiped the sweat from the inside of his 
hands and went into the cage with the keepers and 
gathered up the panting, broken body, with its 
twitching fingers and dead, white face and ears, 
and carried it out. As they lifted it, the handful 
of pitiful medals dropped from the shredded grey 
coat and rattled down upon the floor. In the 
silence that had now succeeded, it was about the 
only sound one heard. 

As we sat that evening on the porch' of Toppan’s 
house, in a fashionable suburb of the city, he said, 
for the third time: “I had that trick from a 
Mpongwee headman,” and added: “It was while 
I was at Victoria Falls, waiting to cross the Kala- 
hari Desert.” 

Then he continued, his eyes growing keener and 
his manner changing: “There is some interesting 
work to be done in that quarter by some one. You 
see, the Kalahari runs like this” — he drew the lines 
on the ground with his cane — “coming down in 
[192] 


A CAGED LION 


something like this shape from the Orange River 
to about the twentieth parallel south. The aneroid 
gives its average elevation about six hundred feet. 
I didn’t cross it at the time, because we had sick- 
ness and the porters cut. But I made a lot of 
geological observations, and from these I have 
built up a theory that the Kalahari is no desert at 
all, but a big, well-watered plateau, with higher 
ground on the east and west. The tribes, too, 
thereabout call the place Linoka-Noka, and that’s 
the Bantu for rivers upon rivers. They’re nasty, 
though, these Bantu, and gave us a lot of trouble. 
They have a way of spitting little poisoned thorns 
into you unawares, and your tongue swells up and 
turns blue and your teeth fall out and — ” 

His wife Victoria came out to us in evening 
dress. 

“Ah', Vic,” said Toppan, jumping up, with a 
very sweet smile, “we were just talking about your 
paper-german next Tuesday, and I think we might 
have some very pretty favours made out of white 
tissue-paper — roses and butterflies, you know.” 


[ 193 ] 







“This Animal of a Buldy 

Jones” 


“This Animal of a Buldy 

Jones” 


W E could always look for fine fighting at 
Julien’s of a Monday morning, because 
at that time the model was posed for the 
week and we picked out the places from which to 
work. Of course the first ten of the esquisse men 
had first choice. So, no matter how early you got 
up and how resolutely you held to your first row 
tabouret, chaps like Rounault, or Marioton, or the 
little Russian, whom we nicknamed “Choubersky,” 
or Haushaulder, or the big American — “This Ani- 
mal of a Buldy Jones” — all strong esquisse men, 
could always chuck you out when they came, which 
they did about ten o’clock, when everything had 
quieted down. When two particularly big, quick- 
tempered, obstinate, and combative men try to 
occupy, simultaneously, a space twelve inches 
square, it gives rise to complications. We used to 
watch and wait for these fights (after we had been 
chucked out ourselves) , and make things worse, and 
[ 197 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


hasten the crises by getting upon the outskirts of 
the crowd that thronged about the disputants and 
shoving with all our mights. Then one of the 
disputants would be jostled rudely against the 
other, who would hit him in the face, and then 
there would be a wild hooroosh and a clatter of 
overturned easels and the flashing of whitened 
knuckles and glimpses of two fierce red faces over 
the shoulders of the crowd, and everything would 
be pleasant. Then, perhaps, you would see an al- 
lusion in the Paris edition of the next morning’s 
“Herald” to “the brutal and lawless students.” 

I remember particularly one fight — quite the best 
I ever saw at Julien’s — or elsewhere, for the matter 
of that. It was between Haushaulder and Gilet. 
Haushaulder was a Dane, and six feet two. Gilet 
was French, and had a waist like Virginie’s. But 
Gilet had just come back from his three years’ 
army service, and knew all about the savate. They 
squared off at each other, Gilet spitting like a cat, 
and Haushaulder grommelant under his mustache. 
“This Animal of a Buldy Jones,” the big Ameri- 
can, bellowed to separate them, for it really looked 
like a massacre. And then, all at once, Gilet spun 
around, bent over till his finger-tips touched the 
floor, and balancing on the toe, lashed out back- 
[198] 


“THIS ANIMAL OF A BULDY JONES” 


wards with his leg at Haushaulder, like any cayuse. 
The heel of his boot caught the Dane on the point 
of the chin. An hour and forty minutes later, 
when Haushaulder recovered consciousness and 
tried to speak, we found that the tip of his tongue 
had been sliced off between his teeth as if by a pair 
of scissors. It was a really unfortunate affair, and 
the government very nearly closed the atelier be- 
cause of it. But “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” 
gave us all his opinion of the savate, and an- 
nounced that the next man who savated from any 
cause whatever “aurait affaire avec lui, oui, avec 
lui, ere nom!” 

Heavens! No one aimerait avoir affaire avec 
cette animal de Buldy Jones. He was from 
Chicago (but, of course, he couldn’t help that!), 
and was taller than even Haushaulder, and much 
broader. The desire for art had come upon him 
all of a sudden while he was studying law at 
Columbia. For “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” 
had gone into law after leaving Yale. Here we 
touch his great weakness. He was a Yale man! 
Why, he was prouder of that fact than he was of 
being an American, or even a Chicagoan — and that 
is saying much. Why, he couldn’t talk of Yale 
without his face flushing. Why, Yale was almost 
[ i99] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


more to him than his mother. I remember, at the 
students* ball at Bulliers, he got the Americans 
together, and with infinite trouble taught us all the 
Yale “yell”, which he swore was a transcript from 
Aristophanes, and for three hours he gravely 
headed a procession that went the rounds of a hall 
howling “Brek! Kek! Kek! Kek! Co-ex!” and 
all the rest of it. 

More than that, “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” 
had pitched on his Varsity baseball nine. In his 
studio — quite the swellest in the Quarter, by the 
way — he had a collection of balls that he had 
pitched in match games at different times, and he 
used to show them to us reverently, and if we were 
his especial friends, would allow us to handle them. 
They were all written over with names and dates. 
He would explain them to us one by one. 

“This one,” he would say, “I pitched in the 
Princeton game, and here’s two I pitched in the 
Harvard game — hard game that — our catcher gave 
out — guess he couldn’t hold me” (with a grin of 
pride), “and Harvard made it interesting for me 
until the fifth inning; then I made two men fan 
out one after the other, and then, just to show ’em 
what I could do, filled the bases, got three balls 
called on me, and then pitched two inshoots and 
[ 200 ] 


“THIS ANIMAL OF A BULDY JONES” 


an outcurve, just as hard as I could deliver. Printz 
of Harvard was at the bat. He struck at every 
one of them — and fanned out. Here’s the ball I 
did it with. Yes, sir. Oh, I can pitch a ball all 
right.” 

Now think of that! Here was this man, “This 
Animal of a Buldy Jones,” a Beaux Arts man, one 
of the best colour and line men on our side, who 
had three esqaisses and five figures “on the wall” 
at Julien’s (any Paris art student will know what 
that means) , and yet the one thing he was proud of, 
the one thing he cared to be admired for, the one 
thing he loved to talk about, was the fact that he 
had pitched for the Yale ’varsity baseball nine. 

All this by way of introduction. 

I wonder how many Julien men there are left 
who remember the affaire Camme? Plenty, I make 
no doubt, for the thing was a monumental charac- 
ter. I heard Roubault tell it at the “Dead Rat” 
just the other day. “Choubersky” wrote to “The 
Young Pretender” that he heard it away in the 
interior of Morocco, where he had gone to paint 
doorways, and Adler, who is now on the “Century” 
staff, says it’s an old story among the illustrators. 
It has been bandied about so much that there is 
danger of its original form being lost. Wherefore 
[201 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

it is time that it should be brought to print. 

Now Camme, be it understood, was a filthy 
little beast — a thorough-paced, blown-in-the-bottle 
blackguard with not enough self-respect to keep 
him sweet through a summer’s day — a rogue, a 
bug — anything you like that is sufficiently insulting; 
besides all this, and perhaps because of it, he was 
a duelist. He loved to have a man slap his face — 
some huge, big-boned, big-hearted man, who knew 
no other weapons but his knuckles. Camme would 
send him his card the next day, with a message to 
the effect that it would give him great pleasure to 
try and kill the gentleman in question at a certain 
time and place. Then there would be a lot of pala- 
ver, and somehow the duel would never come off, 
and Camme’s reputation as a duelist would go up 
another peg, and the rest of us — beastly little 
rapins that we were — would hold him in increased 
fear and increased horror, just as if he were a 
rattler in coil. 

Well, the row began one November morning — 
a Monday — and, of course, it was over the allot- 
ment of seats. Camme had calmly rubbed out the 
name of “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” from the 
floor, and had chalked his own in its place. 

Now, Bouguereau had placed the esquisse of 
[ 202 ] 


“THIS ANIMAL OF A BULDY JONES } 


“This Animal of a Buldy Jones” fifth, the prece- 
dence over Camme. 

But Camme invented reasons for a different 
opinion, and presented them to the whole three 
ateliers at the top of his voice and with unclean 
allusions. We were all climbing up on the taller 
stools by this time, and Virginie, who was the model 
of the week, was making furtive signs at us to give 
the crowd a push, as was our custom. 

Camme was going on at a great rate. 

“Ah, farceur! Ah, espece de volveur, crapaud, 
va; c’est a moi cette place la Sail gaud va te 
prom’ner, va faire des copies au Louvre .” 

To be told to go and make copies in the Louvre 
was in our time the last insult. “This Animal of a 
Buldy Jones,” this sometime Yale pitcher, towering 
above the little frog-like Frenchman, turned to the 
crowd, and said, in grave concern, his forehead 
puckered in great deliberation : 

“I do not know, precisely, that which it is neces- 
sary to do with this kind of a little toad of two 
legs. I do not know whether I should spank him 
or administer the good kick of the boot. I believe 
I shall give him the good kick of the boot. Hein I” 

He turned Camme around, held him at arm’s 
length, and kicked him twice severely. Next day, 
[ 203 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


of course, Camme sent his card, and four of us 
Americans went around to the studio of “This 
Animal of a Buldy Jones” to have a smoke-talk 
over it. Robinson was of the opinion to ignore the 
matter. 

“Now, we can’t do that,” said Adler; “these 
beastly continentals would misunderstand. Can 
you shoot, Buldy Jones?” 

“Only deer.” 

“Fence?” 

“Not a little bit. Oh, let’s go and punch the 
wadding out of him, and be done with it !” 

“No! No! He should be humiliated.” 

“I tell you what — let’s guy the thing.” 

“Get up a fake duel and make him seem ridicu- 
lous.” 

“You’ve got the choice of weapons, Buldy 
Jones.” 

“Fight him with hat-pins.” 

“Oh, let’s go punch the wadding out of him — 
he makes me tired.” 

“Horse” Wilson, who hadn’t spoken, suddenly 
broke in with : 

“Now, listen to me, you other fellows. Let me 
fix this thing. Buldy Jones, I must be one of your 
seconds.” 


[204] 


“THIS ANIMAL OF A BULDY JONES” 


“Soit!” 

“I’m going to Camme, and say like this: ‘This 
Animal of a Buldy Jones’ has the naming of 
weapons. He comes from a strange country, near 
the Mississippi, from a place called Shee-ka-go, and 
there it is not considered etiquette to fight either 
with a sword or pistol; it is too common. How- 
ever, when it is necessary that balls should be ex- 
changed in order to satisfy honour, a curious cus- 
tom is resorted to. Balls are exchanged, but not 
from pistols. They are very terrible balls, large as 
an apple, and of adamantine hardness. ‘This Ani- 
mal of a Buldy Jones,’ even now has a collection. 
No American gentleman of honour travels without 
them. He would gladly have you come and make 
first choice of a ball while he will select one from 
among those you leave. Sur le terrain , you will 
deliver these balls simultaneously toward each 
other, repeating till one or the other adversary 
drops. Then honour can be declared satisfied.” 

“Yes, and do you suppose that Camme will listen 
to such tommy rot as that?” remarked “This Ani- 
mal of a Buldy Jones.” “I think I’d better just 
punch his head.” 

“Listen to it? Of course he’ll listen to it. You’ve 
no idea what curious ideas these continentals have 
[205] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


of the American duel. You can’t propose anything 
so absurd in the dueling line that they won’t give it 
serious thought. And besides, if Camme won’t 
fight this way we’ll tell him that you will have a 
Mexican duel.” 

“What’s that?” 

“Tie your left wrists together, and fight with 
knives in your right hand. That’ll scare the tar 
out of him.” 

And it did. The seconds had a meeting at the 
cafe of the Moulin Rouge , and gave Camme’s 
seconds the choice of the duel Yale or the duel 
Mexico. Camme had no wish to tie himself to a 
man with a knife in his hand, and his seconds came 
the next day and solemnly chose a league ball — 
one that had been used against the Havard nine. 

Will I — will any of us ever forget that duel? 
Camme and his people came upon the ground al- 
most at the same time as we. It was behind the 
mill of Longchamps, of course. Roubault was one 
of Camme’s seconds, and he carried the ball in a 
lacquered Japanese tobacco-jar — gingerly as if it 
were a bomb. We were quick getting to work. 
Camme and “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” were 
each to take his baseball in his hand, stand back to 
back, walk away from each other just the distance 
[ 206 ] 


“THIS ANIMAL OF A BULDY JONES ,f 


between the pitcher’s box and the home plate (we 
had seen to that), turn on the word, and — deliver 
their balls. 

“How do you feel?” I whispered to our princi- 
pal, as I passed the ball into his hands. 

“I feel just as if I was going into a match game, 
with the bleachers full to the top and the boys 
hitting her up for Yale. We ought to give the 
yell, y’ know.” 

“How’s the ball?” 

“A bit soft and not quite round. Bernard of the 
Harvard nine hit the shape out of it in a drive 
over our left field, but it’ll do all right.” 

“This Animal of a Buldy Jones” bent and 
gathered up a bit of dirt, rubbed the ball in it, and 
ground it between his palms. The man’s arms 
were veritable connecting-rods, and were strung 
with tendons like particularly well-seasoned rubber. 
I remembered what he said about few catchers 
being able to hold him, and I recalled the pads and 
masks and wadded gloves of a baseball game, and 
I began to feel nervous. If Camme was hit on the 
temple or over the heart — 

“Now, say, old man, go slow, you know. We 
don’t want to fetch up in Mazas for this. By the 
[207] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


way, what kind of ball are you going to give him? 
What’s the curve?” 

“I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll let him have an 
up-shoot. Never make up my mind till the last 
moment.” 

“All ready, gentlemen!” said Roubault, coming 
up. 

Camme had removed coat, vest, and cravat. 
“This Animal of a Buldy Jones” stripped to a 
sleeveless undershirt. He spat on his hands, and 
rubbed a little more dirt on the ball. 

“Play ball !” he muttered. 

We set them back to back. On the word they 
paced from each other and paused. “This Animal 
of a Buldy Jones” shifted his ball to his right hand, 
and, holding it between his fingers, slowly raised 
both his arms high above his head and a little over 
one shoulder. With his toe he made a little de- 
pression in the soil, while he slowly turned the ball 
between his fingers. 

“Fire!” cried “Horse” Wilson. 

On the word “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” 
turned abruptly about on one foot, one leg came 
high off the ground till the knee nearly touched the 
chest — you know the movement and position well — 
[208] 


“THIS ANIMAL OF A BULDY JONES” 


the uncanny contortions of a pitcher about to de- 
liver. 

Camme threw his ball overhand — bowled it as is 
done in cricket, and it went wide over our man’s 
shoulder. Down came Buldy Jones’ foot, and his 
arm shot forward with a tremendous jerk. Not till 
the very last moment did he glance at his adversary 
or measure the distance. 

“It is an in-curve!” exclaimed “Horse” Wilson 
in my ear. 

We could hear the ball whir as it left a grey 
blurred streak in the air. Camme made as if to 
dodge it with a short toss of head and neck — it was 
all he had time for — and the ball, faithful to the 
last twist of the pitcher’s fingers, swerved sharply 
inward at the same moment and in the same direc- 
tion. 

When we got to Camme and gathered him up, I 
veritably believed that the fellow had been done 
for. For he lay as he had fallen, straight as a 
ramrod and quite as stiff, and his eyes were winking 
like the shutter of a kinetoscope. But “This Ani- 
mal of a Buldy Jones,” who had seen prize-fighters 
knocked out by a single blow, said it was all right. 
An hour later Camme woke up and began to mum- 
ble in pain through his clenched teeth, for the ball, 
[209] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


hitting him on the point of the chin, had dislocated 
his jaw. 

The heart-breaking part of the affair came after- 
ward, when “This Animal of a Buldy Jones” kept 
us groping in the wet grass and underbrush until 
after dark looking for his confounded baseball, 
which had caromed off Camme’s chin, and gone — 
no one knows where. 

We never found it. 


[ 210 ] 






Dying Fires 






































































» • 




Dying Fires 


Y OUNG Overbeck’s father was editor and 
proprietor of the county paper in Colfax, 
California, and the son, so soon as his high- 
school days were over, made his appearance in the 
office as his father’s assistant. So abrupt was the 
transition that his diploma, which was to hang over 
the editorial desk, had not yet returned from the 
framer’s, while the first copy that he was called on 
to edit was his own commencement oration on the 
philosophy of Dante. He had worn a white pique 
cravat and a cutaway coat on the occasion of its 
delivery, and the county commissioner, who was 
the guest of honour on the platform, had congratu- 
lated him as he handed him his sheepskin. For 
Overbeck was the youngest and the brightest mem- 
ber of his class. 

^ Colfax was a lively town in those days. The 
teaming from the valley over into the mining coun- 
try on the other side of the Indian River was at 
its height then. Colfax was the headquarters of 
the business, and the teamsters — after the long 

[213] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


pull up from the Indian River Canon — showed 
interest in an environment made up chiefly of 
saloons. 

Then there were the mining camps over by Iowa 
Hill, the Morning Star, the Big Dipper, and fur- 
ther on, up in the Gold Run country, the Little 
Providence. There was Dutch Flat, full of Mexi- 
can-Spanish girls and “breed” girls, where the 
dance-halls were of equal number with the bars. 
There was — a little way down the line — Clipper 
Gap, where the mountain ranches began, and where 
the mountain cow-boy lived up to the traditions of 
his kind. 

And this life, tumultuous, headstrong, vivid in 
colour, vigorous in action, was bound together by 
the railroad, which not only made a single com- 
munity out of all that part of the east slope of the 
Sierras’ foothills, but contributed its own life as 
well — the life of oilers, engineers, switchmen, eat- 
ing-house waitresses and cashiers, “lady” operators, 
conductors, and the like. 

Of such a little world news-items are evolved — 
sometimes even scare-head, double-leaded descrip- 
tive articles — supplemented by interviews with 
sheriffs and ante-mortem statements. Good grist 
for a county paper; good opportunities for an 
[214] 


DYING FIRES 


unspoiled, observant, imaginative young fellow at 
the formative period of his life. Such was the 
time, such the environment, such the conditions 
that prevailed when young Overbeck, at the age of 
twenty-one, sat down to the writing of his first 
novel. 

He completed it in five months, and, though he 
did not know the fact then, the novel was good. 
It was not great — far from it, but it was not merely 
clever. Somehow, by a miracle of good fortune, 
young Overbeck had got started right at the very 
beginning. He had not been influenced by a fetich 
of his choice till his work was a mere replica of 
some other writer’s. He was not literary. He 
had not much time for books. He lived in the 
midst of a strenuous, eager life, a little primal even 
yet; a life of passions that were often elemental in 
their simplicity and directness. His schooling and 
his newspaper work — it was he who must find or 
ferret out the news all along the line, from Penrhyn 
to Emigrant Gap — had taught him observation 
without — here was the miracle — dulling the edge 
of his sensitiveness. He saw, as those few, few 
people see who live close to life at the beginning 
of an epoch. He saw into the life and the heart 
beneath the life; the life and the heart of Bunt 

[215] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


McBride, as with eight horses and much abjura- 
tion he negotiated a load of steel “stamps” up the 
sheer leap of the Indian Canon; he saw into the 
life and into the heart of Irma Tejada, who kept 
case for the faro players at Dutch Flat; he saw 
into the life and heart of Lizzie Toby, the biscuit- 
shooter in the railway eating-house, and into the 
life and heart of “Doc” Twitchel, who had degrees 
from Edinburgh and Leipsic, and who, for obscure 
reasons, chose to look after the measles, sprains 
and rheumatisms of the countryside. 

And, besides, there were others and still others, 
whom young Overbeck learned to know to the 
very heart’s heart of them: blacksmiths, traveling 
peddlers, section-bosses, miners, horse-wranglers, 
cow-punchers, the stage-drivers, the storekeeper, 
the hotel-keeper, the ditch-tender, the prospector, 
the seamstress of the town, the postmistress, the 
schoolmistress, the poetess. Into the lives of these 
and the hearts of these young Overbeck saw, and 
the wonder of that sight so overpowered him that 
he had no thought and no care for other people’s 
books. And he was only twenty-one ! Only 
twenty-one, and yet he saw clearly into the great, 
complicated, confused human machine that clashed 
and jarred around him. Only twenty-one, and yet 
[216] 


DYING FIRES 


he read the enigma that men of fifty may alone 
hope to solve! Once in a great while this thing 
may happen — in such out of the way places as that 
country around Colfax in Placer County, Cali- 
fornia, where no outside influences have play, 
where books are few and misprized and the reading 
circle a thing unknown. From time to time such 
men are born, especially along the line of cleavage 
where the furthest skirmish line of civilisation 
thrusts and girds at the wilderness. A very few 
find their true profession before the fire is stamped 
out of them; of these few, fewer still have the 
force to make themselves heard. Of these last the 
majority die before they attain the faculty of mak- 
ing their message intelligible. Those that remain 
are the world’s great men. 

At the time when his first little book was on its 
initial journey to the Eastern publishing houses, 
Overbeck was by no means a great man. The im- 
maturity that was yet his, the lack of knowledge of 
his tools, clogged his work and befogged his vision. 
The smooth running of the cogs and the far-dart- 
ing range of vision would come in the course of the 
next fifteen years of unrelenting persistence. The 
ordering and organising and controlling of his 
machine he could, with patience and by taking 
[ 21 7 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


thought, accomplish for himself. The original 
impetus had come straight from the almighty gods. 
That impetus was young yet, feeble, yet, coming 
down from so far it was spent by the time it 
reached the earth — at Colfax, California. A 
touch now might divert it. Judge with what care 
such a thing should be nursed and watched; com- 
pared with the delicacy with which it unfolds, the 
opening of a rosebud is an abrupt explosion. Later 
on, such insight, such undeveloped genius may be- 
come a tremendous world-power, a thing to split a 
nation in twain as the axe cleaves the block. But at 
twenty-one, a whisper — and it takes flight ; a touch 
— it withers; the lifting of a finger — it is gone. 

The same destiny that had allowed Overbeck 
to be born, and that thus far had watched over his 
course, must have inspired his choice, his very first 
choice, of a publisher, for the manuscript of “The 
Vision of Bunt McBride” went straight as a home- 
bound bird to the one man of all others who could 
understand the beginnings of genius and recognise 
the golden grain of truth in the chaff of unessen- 
tials. His name was Conant, and he accepted the 
manuscript by telegram. 

He did more than this, and one evening Over- 
beck stood on the steps of the post-office and opened 
[218] 


DYING FIRES 


a letter in his hand, and, looking up and off, saw 
the world transfigured. His chance had come. In 
half a year of time he had accomplished what other 
men — other young writers — strive for throughout 
the best years of their youth. He had been called 
to New York. Conant had offered him a minor 
place on his editorial staff. 

Overbeck reached the great city a fortnight 
later, and the cutaway coat and pique cravat — 
unworn since Commencement — served to fortify 
his courage at the first interview with the man who 
was to make him — so he believed — famous. 

Ah, the delights, the excitement, the inspiration 
of that day! Let those judge who have striven 
toward the Great City through years of deferred 
hope and heart-sinkings and sacrifice daily renewed. 
Overbeck’s feet were set in those streets whose 
names had become legendary to his imagination. 
Public buildings and public squares familiar only 
through the weekly prints defiled before him like a 
pageant, but friendly for all that, inviting, even. 
But the vast conglomerate life that roared by his 
ears, like the systole and diastole of an almighty 
heart, was for a moment disquieting. Soon the 
human resemblance faded. It became 4^1'i 
machine infinitely huge, infinitely fonfiiidabl& 

[219] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


It challenged him with superb condescension. 

“I must down you,” he muttered, as he made his 
way toward Conant’s, “or you will down me.” He 
saw it clearly. There was no other alternative. 
The young boy in his foolish finery of a Colfax 
tailor’s make, with no weapons but such wits as the 
gods had given him, was pitted against the levia- 
than. 

There was no friend nearer than his native state 
on the other fringe of the continent. He was 
fearfully alone. 

But he was twenty-one. The wits that the gods 
had given him were good, and the fine fire that 
was within him, the radiant freshness of his na- 
ture, stirred and leaped to life at the challenge. 
Ah, he would win, he would win! And in his 
exuberance, the first dim consciousness of his power 
came to him. He could win, he had it in him; he 
began to see that now. That nameless power was 
his which would enable him to grip this monstrous 
life by the very throat, and bring it down on its 
knee before him to listen respectfully to what he 
had to say. 

The interview with Conant was no less ex- 
hilarating. It was in the reception-room of the 
great house that it took place, and while waiting 
[ 220 ] 


DYING FIRES 


for Conant to come in, Overbeck, his heart in his 
mouth, recognised, in the original drawings on 
the walls, picture after picture, signed by famous 
illustrators, that he had seen reproduced in Co- 
nant’s magazine. 

Then Conant himself had appeared and shaken 
the young author’s hand a long time, and had 
talked to him with the utmost kindness of his book, 
of his plans for the immediate future, of the 
work he would do in the editorial office and of the 
next novel he wished him to write. 

“We’ll only need you here in the mornings,” 
said the editor, “and you can put in your after- 
noons on your novel. Have you anything in mind 
as good as ‘Bunt McBride’?” 

“I have a sort of notion for one,” hazarded the 
young man; and Conant had demanded to hear it. 

Stammering, embarrassed, Overbeck outlined it. 

“I see, I see!” Conant commented. “Yes, there 
is a good story in that. Maybe Hastings will want 
to use it in the monthly. But we’ll make a book 
of it, anyway, if you work it up as well as the 
McBride story.” 

And so the young fellow made his first step in 
New York. The very next day he began his second 
novel. 


[ 221 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


The stalwart rain! 

Ah, the rush of down-toppling waters; 

The torrent ! 

\ Merge of mist and musky air ; 

The current 

Sweeps thwart my blinded sight again . 

“Ah !” exclaimed one of the audience, “see, see 
that bright green flash!” 

Thus in public. In private all was different. 
Walking home with one or another of the set, 
young Overbeck heard their confidences. 

“Keppler is a good fellow right enough, but, 
my goodness, he can’t write verse!” 

“That thing of Miss Patten’s to-night! Did 
you ever hear anything so unconvincing, so ob- 
vious? Poor old woman!” 

“I’m really sorry for Martens; awfully decent 
sort, but he never should try to write novels.” 

By rapid degrees young Overbeck caught the 
lingo of the third-raters. He could talk about 
“tendencies” and the “influence of reactions.” 
Such and such a writer had a “sense of form,” 
another a “feeling for word effects.” He knew all 
about “tones” and “notes” and “philistinisms.” 
He could tell the difference between an allegory 
[224] 


DYING FIRES 


and a simile as far as he could see them. An anti- 
climax was the one unforgivable sin under heaven. 
A mixed metaphor made him wince, and a split 
infinitive hurt him like a blow. 

But the great word was “convincing.” To say 
a book was convincing was to give positively the 
last verdict. To be “unconvincing” was to be shut 
out from the elect. If the New Bohemian decided 
that the last popular book was unconvincing, there 
was no appeal. The book was not to be mentioned 
in polite conversation. 

And the author of “The Vision of Bunt Mc- 
Bride,” as yet new to the world as the day he was 
born, with all his eager ambition and quick sensi- 
tiveness, thought that all this was the real thing. 
He had never so much as seen literary people be- 
fore. How could he know the difference? He 
honestly believed that New Bohemia was the true 
literary force of New York. He wrote home that 
the association with such people, thinkers, poets, 
philosophers, was an inspiration; that he had 
learned more in one week in their company than 
he had learned in Colfax in a whole year. 

Perhaps, too, it was the flattery he received that 
helped to carry Overbeck off his feet. The New 
Bohemians made a little lion of him when “Bunt 
[225 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


McBride” reached its modest pinnacle of popu- 
larity. They kotowed to him, and toadied to him, 
and fagged and tooted for him, and spoke of his 
book as a masterpiece. They said he had suc- 
ceeded where Kipling had ignominiously failed. 
They said there was more harmony of prose ef- 
fects in one chapter of “Bunt McBride” than in 
everything that Bret Harte ever wrote. They 
told him he was a second Stevenson — only with 
more refinement. 

Then the women of the set, who were of those 
who did not write, who called themselves “mere 
dilettantes,” but who “took an interest in young 
writers” and liked to influence their lives and works, 
began to flutter and buzz around him. They told 
him that they understood him; that they under- 
stood his temperament; that they could see where 
his forte lay; and they undertook his education. 

There was in “The Vision of Bunt McBride” a 
certain sane and healthy animalism that hurt no- 
body, and that, no doubt, Overbeck, in later books, 
would modify. He had taken life as he found it 
to make his book; it was not his fault that the 
teamsters, biscuit-shooters and “breed” girls of the 
foothills were coarse in fibre. In his sincerity he 
could not do otherwise in his novel than paint life 
[226] 


DYING FIRES 


as he saw it. He had dealt with it honestly; he 
did not dab at the edge of the business; he had 
sent his fist straight through it. 

But the New Bohemians could not abide this. 

“Not so much faroucherie, you dear young 
Lochinvar!” they said. “Art must uplift. ‘Look 
thou not down, but up toward uses of a cup’ ;” and 
they supplemented the quotation by lines from 
Walter Peter, and read to him from Ruskin and 
Matthew Arnold. 

Ah, the spiritual was the great thing. We were 
here to make the world brighter and better for 
having lived in it. The passions of a waitress in 
a railway eating-house — how sordid the subject! 
Dear boy, look for the soul, strive to rise to higher 
planes ! Tread upward; every book should leave a 
clean taste in the mouth, should tend to make one 
happier, should elevate, not debase. 

So by degrees Overbeck began to see his future 
in a different light. He began to think that he 
really had succeeded where Kipling had failed; 
that he really was Stevenson with more refinement, 
and that the one and only thing lacking in his work 
was soul. He believed that he must strive for the 
spiritual, and “let the ape and tiger die.” The 

[227] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


McBride” reached its modest pinnacle of popu- 
larity. They kotowed to him, and toadied to him, 
and fagged and tooted for him, and spoke of his 
book as a masterpiece. They said he had suc- 
ceeded where Kipling had ignominiously failed. 
They said there was more harmony of prose ef- 
fects in one chapter of “Bunt McBride” than in 
everything that Bret Harte ever wrote. They 
told him he was a second Stevenson — only with 
more refinement. 

Then the women of the set, who were of those 
who did not write, who called themselves “mere 
dilettantes,” but who “took an interest in young 
writers” and liked to influence their lives and works, 
began to flutter and buzz around him. They told 
him that they understood him; that they under- 
stood his temperament; that they could see where 
his forte lay; and they undertook his education. 

There was in “The Vision of Bunt McBride” a 
certain sane and healthy animalism that hurt no- 
body, and that, no doubt, Overbeck, in later books, 
would modify. He had taken life as he found it 
to make his book; it was not his fault that the 
teamsters, biscuit-shooters and “breed” girls of the 
foothills were coarse in fibre. In his sincerity he 
could not do otherwise in his novel than paint life 
[226] 


DYING FIRES 


as he saw it. He had dealt with it honestly; he 
did not dab at the edge of the business; he had 
sent his fist straight through it. 

But the New Bohemians could not abide this. 

“Not so much faroucherie, you dear young 
Lochinvar!” they said. “Art must uplift. ‘Look 
thou not down, but up toward uses of a cup’ ;” and 
they supplemented the quotation by lines from 
Walter Peter, and read to him from Ruskin and 
Matthew Arnold. 

Ah, the spiritual was the great thing. We were 
here to make the world brighter and better for 
having lived in it. The passions of a waitress in 
a railway eating-house — how sordid the subject! 
Dear boy, look for the soul, strive to rise to higher 
planes ! Tread upward; every book should leave a 
clean taste in the mouth, should tend to make one 
happier, should elevate, not debase. 

So by degrees Overbeck began to see his future 
in a different light. He began to think that he 
really had succeeded where Kipling had failed; 
that he really was Stevenson with more refinement, 
and that the one and only thing lacking in his work 
was soul. He believed that he must strive for the 
spiritual, and “let the ape and tiger die.” The 
[227] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


originality and unconventionality of his little book 
he came to regard as crudities. 

“Yes,” he said one day to Miss Patten and a 
couple of his friends, “I have been re-reading my 
book of late. I can see its limitations — now. It 
has a lack of form ; the tonality is a little false. It 
fails somehow to convince.” 

Thus the first Winter passed. In the mornings 
Overbeck assiduously edited copy and made up 
front matter on the top floor of the Conant build- 
ing. In the evenings he called on Miss Patten, 
or some other member of the set. Once a week, 
up-town, he fed fat on the literary delicatessen that 
New Bohemia provided. In the meantime, every 
afternoon, from luncheon-time till dark, he toiled 
on his second novel, “Renunciations.” The en- 
vironment of “Renunciations” was a far cry from 
Colfax, California. It was a city-bred story, with 
no fresher atmosphere than that of bought flowers. 
Its dramatis personae were all of the leisure class, 
opera-goers, intriguers, riders of blood horses, cer- 
tainly more refined than Lizzie Toby, biscuit- 
shooter, certainly more spirituelle than Irma Teja- 
da, case-keeper in Dog Omahone’s faro joint, 
certainly more elegant than Bunt McBride, team- 
[228] 


DYING FIRES 

ster of the Colfax Iowa Hill Freight Transporta- 
tion Company. 

From time to time, as the novel progressed, he 
read it to the dilettante women whom he knew 
best among the New Bohemians. They advised 
him as to its development, and “influenced” its 
outcome and denouement. 

“I think you have found your metier , dear boy,” 
said one of them, when “Renunciations” was nearly 
completed. “To portray the concrete — is it not a 
small achievement, sublimated journalese, nothing 
more? But to grasp abstractions, to analyse a 
woman’s soul, to evoke the spiritual essence in 
humanity, as you have done in your ninth chapter 
of ‘Renunciations’ — that is the true function of 
art. Je vous fais mes compliments . ‘Renuncia- 
tions’ is a chef-d'oeuvre . Can’t you see yourself 
what a stride you have made, how much broader 
your outlook has become, how much more catholic, 
since the days of ‘Bunt McBride’?” 

To be sure, Overbeck could see it. Ah, he was 
growing, he was expanding. He was mounting 
higher planes. He was more — catholic. That, of 
all words, was the one to express his mood. Catho- 
lic, ah, yes, he was catholic! 

When “Renunciations” was finished he took the 
[ 229 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


manuscript to Conant and waited a fortnight in an 
agony of suspense and repressed jubilation for the 
great man’s verdict. He was all the more anxious 
to hear it because, every now and then, while writ- 
ing the story, doubts — distressing, perplexing — had 
intruded. At times and all of a sudden, after days 
of the steadiest footing, the surest progress, the 
story — the whole set and trend of the affair — 
would seem, as it were, to escape from his control. 
Where once, in “Bunt McBride,” he had gripped, 
he must now grope. What was it? He had been 
so sure of himself, with all the stimulus of new 
surroundings, the work in this second novel should 
have been all the easier. But the doubt would fade, 
and for weeks he would plough on, till again, and 
all unexpectedly, he would find himself in an agony 
of indecision as to the outcome of some vital pivotal 
episode of the story. Of two methods of treat- 
ment, both equally plausible, he could not say which 
was the true, which the false; and he must 
needs take, as it were, a leap in the dark — it was 
either that or abandoning the story, trusting to 
mere luck that he would, somehow, be carried 
through. 

A fortnight after he had delivered the manu- 
[230] 


DYING FIRES 


script to Conant he presented himself in the pub- 
lisher’s office. 

“I was just about to send for you,” said Conant. 
“I finished your story last week.” 

There was a pause. Overbeck settled himself 
comfortably in his chair, but his nails were cutting 
his palms. 

“Hastings has read it, too — and — well, frankly, 
Overbeck, we were disappointed.” 

“Yes?” inquired Overbeck, calmly. “H’m — 
that’s too b-bad.” 

He could not hear, or at least could not under- 
stand, just what the publisher said next. Then, 
after a time that seemed immeasurably long, he 
caught the words : 

“It Would not do you a bit of good, my boy, to 
have us publish it — it would harm you. There are 
a good many things I would lie about, but books 
are not included. This ‘Renunciations’ of yours 
is — is, why, confound it, Overbeck, it’s foolish- 
ness.” 

Overbeck went out and sat on a bench in a 
square near by, looking vacantly at a fountain as 
it rose and fell and rose again with an incessant 
cadenced splashing. Then he took himself home 
to his hall bedroom. He had brought the manu- 

[231 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


script of his novel with him, and for a long time he 
sat at his table listlessly turning the leaves, con- 
fused, stupid, all but inert. The end, however, did 
not come suddenly. A few weeks later “Renuncia- 
tions” was published, but not by Conant. It bore 
the imprint of an obscure firm in Boston. The 
covers were of limp dressed leather, olive green, 
and could be tied together by thongs, like a port- 
folio. The sale stopped after five hundred copies 
had been ordered, and the real critics, those who 
did not belong to New Bohemia, hardly so much 
as noticed the book. 

In the Autumn, when the third-raters had come 
back from their vacations, the “evenings” at Miss 
Patten’s were resumed, and Overbeck hurried to 
the very first meeting. He wanted to talk it all over 
with them. In his chagrin and cruel disappoint- 
ment he was hungry for some word of praise, of 
condolement. He wanted to be told again, even 
though he had begun to suspect many things, that 
he had succeeded where Kipling had failed, that he 
was Stevenson with more refinement. 

But the New Bohemians, the same women and 
fakirs and half-baked minor poets who had “in- 
fluenced” him and had ruined him, could hardly 
find time to notice him now. The guest of the 
[232] 


DYING FIRES 


evening was a new little lion who had joined the 
set. A symbolist versifier who wrote over the 
pseudonym of de la Houssaye, with black, oily hair 
and long white hands; him the Bohemians thronged 
about in crowds as before they had thronged about 
Overbeck. Only once did any one of them pay 
attention to the latter. This was the woman who 
had nicknamed him “Young Lochinvar.” Yes, she 
had read “Renunciations,” a capital little thing, a 
little thin in parts, lacking in finesse . He must 
strive for his true medium of expression, his true 
note. Ah, art was long! Study of the new sym- 
bolists would help him. She would beg him to 
read Monsieur de la Houssaye’s “The Monoliths.” 
Such subtlety, such delicious word-chords ! It 
could not fail to inspire him. 

Shouldered off, forgotten, the young fellow crept 
back to his little hall bedroom and sat down to 
think it over. There in the dark of the night his 
eyes were opened, and he saw, at last, what these 
people had done to him; saw the Great Mistake, 
and that he had wasted his substance. 

The golden apples, that had been his for the 
stretching of the hand, he had flung from him. 
Tricked, trapped, exploited, he had prostituted the 
great good thing that had been his by right divine, 
for the privilege of eating husks with swine. Now 

[233] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


was the day of the mighty famine, and the starved 
and broken heart of him, crying out for help, 
found only a farrago of empty phrases. 

He tried to go back; he did in very fact go back 
to the mountains and the canons of the great 
Sierras. “He arose and went to his father,” and, 
with such sapped and broken strength as New 
Bohemia had left him, strove to wrest some wreck- 
age from the dying fire. 

But the ashes were cold by now. The fire that 
the gods had allowed him to snatch, because he 
was humble and pure and clean and brave, had 
been stamped out beneath the feet of minor and 
dilettante poets, and now the gods guarded close 
the brands that yet remained on the altars. 

They may not be violated twice, those sacred 
fires. Once in a lifetime the very young and the 
pure in heart may see the shine of them and pluck 
a brand from the altar’s edge. But, once possessed, 
it must be watched with a greater vigilance than 
even that of the gods, for its light will live only 
for him who snatched it first. Only for him that 
shields it, even with his life, from the contact of 
the world does it burst into a burning and a shining 
light. Let once the touch of alien fingers disturb 
it, and there remains only a little heap of bitter 
ashes. 


Grettir at Drangey 


\ 

v. ; * 





Grettir at Dr an gey 


i 

HOW GRETTIR CAME TO THE ISLAND 

A LONG slant of rain came from out the 
northwest, and much fog; and the sea, 
still swollen by the last of the winter 
gales — now two days gone — raced by the bows of 
their boat in great swells, quiet, huge. 

It was cold, and the wind, like a hound at fault, 
hunted along through the gorges between the wave 
heads, casting back and forth swiftly in bulging, 
sounding blasts that made an echo between the 
walls of water. At times the wind discovered the 
boat and leaped upon it suddenly with a gush of 
fierce noise, clutching at the sail and bearing it 
down as the dog bears down the young elk. 

The sky, a vast reach of broken grey, slid along 
close overhead, sometimes even dropping flat upon 
the sea, blotting the horizon and whirling about 
like geyser mist or the reek and smoke from the 

[ 237 1 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


mouth of jokuls. Then, perhaps, out of the fog 
and out of the rain, suddenly great and fearful 
came towering and dipping a mighty berg, the 
waves breaking like surf about its base, spires of 
grey ice lifting skywards, all dripping and gashed 
and jagged; knobs and sharp ridges thrusting from 
under beneath the water, full of danger to ships. 
At such moments they must put the helm over 
quickly, sheering off from the colossus before it 
caught and trampled them. 

(But no living thing did they see through all 
the day. Sea birds there were none; no porpoises 
played about the boat, no seals barked from surge 
to surge. There was nothing but the silent gallop 
of the waves, the flitting of the leaden sky, the 
uneven panting of the wind, and the rattle of 
the rain on the half-frozen sail. The sea was very 
lonely, barren, empty of all life. 

Towards the middle of the day, when Iceland 
lay far behind them, — a bar of black on the ocean’s 
edge, — they were little by little aware of the roll 
and thunder of breakers, and the cries and calls of 
very many sea birds and — very faint — the bleating 
of sheep. The fog and the scud of rain and the 
spindrift that the wind whipped from off the wave- 
tops shut out all sight beyond the cast of a spear. 
[238] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


But they knew that they must be driving hard upon 
the island, and Grettir, from his place at the helm, 
bent himself to look under the curve of the sail. 
He called to Illugi, his brother, and to Noise, the 
thrall, who stood peering at the bows of the boat 
(their eyes made small to pierce the mist) , to know 
if they saw aught of the island. 

“I see,” answered Illugi, “only wrack and drift 
of wreck and streamers of kelp, but we are close 
upon it.” 

Then all at once Grettir threw the boat up into 
the wind, and shouted aloud: 

“Look overhead! Quick! Above there! We 
are indeed close.” 

And for all that the foot and mid-most part of 
the island were unseen because of the mist, there, 
far above them, between sea and sky, looming, as it 
were, out of heaven, rose suddenly the front of the 
cliff, rearing the forehead of it, high from out all 
that din of surf and swirl of mist and rain, bare 
to the buffet of storms, iron-strong, everlasting, a 
mighty rock. 

They lowered the sail and ran out the sweeps, 
and for an hour skirted the edge of the island 
searching for the landing-place, where the rope- 
ladder hung from the cliff’s edge. When they 

[239] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


had found it, they turned the nose of the boat 
landward, and, caught by the set of the surf, were 
drawn inwards, and at last flung up on the beaches. 
Waist-deep in the icy undertow, they ran the boat 
up and made her fast, rejoicing that they had won 
to land without ill-fortune. 

The wind for an instant tore in twain the veils 
of fog, and they saw the black cliff towering above 
them, as well as the ladder that hung from its 
summit clattering against the rock as the wind 
dashed it to and fro, and as they turned from the 
boat to look about them, lo, at their feet, stranded 
at make of the ebb, a great walrus, crushed between 
two ice-floes, lay dead, the rime of the frost en- 
crusting its barbels. 

So Grettir Asmundson, called The Strong, out- 
lawed throughout Iceland, came with his brother 
Illugi, and the thrall Noise, to live on the Island of 
Drangey. 


[240] 


II 


HOW GRETTIR AND ILLUGI HIS BROTHER KEPT THE 
ISLAND 

On top of the cliff (to be reached only by climb- 
ing the rope-ladder) were sheep-walks, where the 
shepherds from the mainland kept their flocks. 
Grettir and Illugi took over these, for food and 
for the sake of their pelts which were to make 
them coverings. They built themselves a house 
out of the driftwood that came ashore at the foot 
of the cliff with every tide, and throughout the 
rest of the winter days lived in peace. 

But in the early spring a fisherman carried the 
news to the mainland that he had seen men on the 
top of Drangey, and that the ladder was up. 

Forthwith came the farmers and shepherds in 
their boats to know if such were the truth. They 
found, indeed, the ladder up, and after calling and 
shouting a long time time, brought the hero and his 
brother to the cliff’s edge. 

“What now?” they cried. “Give a reckoning 
of our sheep. Is it peace or war between you and 
[241 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


us? Why have you come to our island? Answer, 
Grettir — outlaw.” 

“What I have, I hold,” called Grettir. “Out- 
lawed I am, indeed, and no man is there in all 
Iceland that dare help me to home or hiding. Mine 
is the Island of Drangey, and mine are the sheep 
and the goats.” 

“Robber!” shouted the shepherds, “since when 
have you bought the island? Show the title.” 

For answer Grettir drew his sword from its 
sheath, and held it high. 

“That is my title,” he cried. “When that you 
shall take from me, the Island of Drangey 
is yours again.” 

“At least render up our sheep,” answered the 
shepherds. 

“What I have said, I have said!” cried Grettir, 
and with that he and Illugi drew back from the 
cliff’s edge and were no more seen. 

The shepherds sailed back to the mainland, and 
could think of no way of ridding the island of 
Grettir and his brother. 

The summer waned, and finding themselves no 
further along than at the beginning, they struck 
hands with a certain Thorbjorn, called The Hook, 
and sold him their several claims. 

[242] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


So it came about that Thorbjorn the Hook was 
also an enemy of Grettir, for he swore that foul 
or fair, ill or well, he would have the head of the 
hero, and the price that was upon it, as well as the 
sheepwalks and herds of Drangey. 

This Thorbjorn had an old foster-mother named 
Thurid, who, although the law of Christ had long 
since prevailed through all the country, still made 
witchcraft, and by this means promised The Hook 
that he should have the island, and with it the heads 
of Illugi and Grettir. She herself was a mumbling, 
fumbling carline of a sour spirit and fierce temper. 
Once when The Hook and his brother were at tail- 
game, she, looking over his shoulder, taunted him 
because he had made a bad move. On his answer- 
ing in surly fashion, she caught up one of the 
pieces, and drove the tail of it so fiercely against 
his eye that the ball had started from the socket. 
He had sprung up with a mighty oath, and dealt 
her so strong a blow that she had taken to her 
bed a month, and thereafterward must walk with a 
stick. There was no love lost between the two. 

Meanwhile, Grettir and Illugi lived in peace 
upon the top of Drangey. Illugi was younger than 
the hero; a fine lad with yellow hair and blue 
eyes. The brothers loved each other, and could 

[243 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


not walk or sit together, but that the arm of one 
was about the shoulder of the other. The lad knew 
very well that neither he nor Grettir would ever 
leave Drangey alive; but in spite of that he abode 
on the island, and was happy in the love and 
comradeship of his older brother. As for Grettir, 
hunted and hustled from Norway to Skaptar Jokul, 
he could trust Illugi only. The thrall Noise was 
meet for little but to gather driftwood to feed the 
fire. But Illugi, of all men in the world, Grettir 
had chosen to stay at his side in this, the last stand 
of his life, and to bear him company in the night 
when he waked and was afraid. 

For the weird that the Vampire had laid upon 
Grettir, when he had fought with him through the 
night at Thorhall-stead, lay heavy upon him. As 
the Vampire had said, his strength was never 
greater than at the moment when, spent and weary 
with the grapple, he had turned the monster under 
him; and, moreover, as the dead man had foretold, 
the eyes of him — the sightless, lightless dead eyes 
of him — grew out of the darkness in the late 
watches of the night, and stared at Grettir which- 
ever way he turned. 

For a long time all went well with the two. 
Bleak though it was, the brothers grew to love the 

[244] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


Island of Drangey. Not all the days were so bitter 
as the one that witnessed their arrival. Through- 
out the summer — when the daylight lengthened 
and lengthened, till at last the sun never set at all — 
the weather held fair. The crust of soil on the 
top of the great rock grew green and brilliant with 
gorse and moss and manzel-wursel. Blackberries 
flourished on southern exposures and in crevices 
between the bowlders, and wild thyme and heather 
bloomed and billowed in the sea wind. 

Day after day the brothers walked the edge of 
the cliff, making the rounds of the snares they had 
set for sea fowl. Day after day, descending to the 
beaches, they fished in the offing or with ready 
spears crept from rock to rock, stalking the great 
bull-walruses that made the land to sun themselves. 
Day after day in a cloudless sky the sun shone; 
day after day the sea, deep blue, coruscated and 
flashed in his light; day after day the wind blew 
free, the flowers spread, and the surf shouted 
hoarsely on the beaches, and the sea fowl clam- 
oured, cried, and rose and fell in glinting hordes. 
The air was full of the fine, clean aroma of the 
ocean, even the perfume of the flowers was crossed 
with a tang of salt, and the seaweed at low tide 
[245 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


threw off, under the heat of the sun, a warm, sweet 
redolence of its own. 

It was a brave life. They were no man’s men. 
The lonely, rock-ribbed island, the grass, the 
growths of green, the blue sea, and the blessed 
sunlight were their friends, their helpers; they held 
what of the world they saw in fief. They made 
songs to the morning, and sang them on the 
cliff’s edge, looking off over the sea beneath, stand- 
ing on a point of rock, the wind in their faces, the 
taste of salt in their mouths, their long braids of 
yellow hair streaming from their foreheads. 

They made songs to their swords, and swung 
the ponderous blades in cadence as they sang — wild, 
unrhymed, metrical chants, monotonous, turning 
upon but few notes; savage songs, full of man- 
slayings and death-fights against great odds, 
shouted out in deep-toned, male voices, there, far 
above the world, on that airy, wind-swept, lonely 
rock. A brave life ! 

The end they knew must come betimes. They 
were in nowise afraid. They made a song to their 
death — the song they would sing when they had 
turned Berserk in the crash of swords, when the 
great grey blades were rising and falling, death, 
[246] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


like lightning, leaping from their edges; when 
shield rasped shield, and the spears sank home and 
wrenched out the life in a spurt of scarlet, and the 
massive axes rang upon helmet and hauberk, and 
men, heroes all, met death with a cheer, and went 
out into the Dark with a shout. A brave life ! 


[ 247 ] 


Ill 


OF THE WEIRD OF THURID, FOSTER-MOTHER TO 
THORBJORN HOOK 

Twice during that summer The Hook made 
attempts to secure the island. Once he sailed 
over to Drangey, and standing up in the prow 
of his boat near the beach, close by where 
the ladder hung, talked long with Grettir, who 
came to the rim of the cliff in answer to his shouts. 
He promised the Outlaw (so only that he would 
yield up the island) full possession of half the sheep 
that yet remained and a free passage in one of his 
ships to any port within fifty leagues. But the 
hero had but one answer to all persuadings. 

“Drangey is mine, ,, he said. “There is no rede 
whereby you can get me hence. Here do I bide, 
whatso may come to hand, to the day of my death 
and my undoing,” and The Hook must sail home 
in evil mind, gnawing his nails in his fury, and 
vowing that he would yet gain the island and lay 
Grettir to earth, and get the best out of the bad 
bargain he had made. 

Another time The Hook hired a man named 
[248] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


Hoering, a great climber, to try, by night, to scale 
the hinder side of Drangey where the cliff was not 
so bold. But halfway up the man lost either his 
wits or his footing, for he fell dreadfully upon the 
rocks far below, and brake the neck of him, so that 
the spine drave through the skin. 

And after that, certainly Grettir and Illugi were 
let alone. The fame of them and of their seizure 
of Drangey and the blood feud between them and 
Thorbjorn, called The Hook, went wide through 
all that part of Iceland, and many the man that 
put off from the mainland and sailed to the island, 
just to hail the Outlaw, at the head of the ladder, 
and wish him well. Thus the summer and the next 
winter passed. 

At about the break-up of the winter night, The 
Hook began to importune his foster-mother, Thu- 
rid, that she should make good her promise as to 
the winning of Grettir. At last she said: “If you 
are to have my rede, I must have my will. Strike 
hands with my hand then, and swear to me to do 
those things that I shall say.” And The Hook 
struck hands and sware the oath. 

Then, though he was loath to visit the island 
again, she bade him man an eight-oared boat and 
flit her out to Drangey. 

[249] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


When they had reached the island, and after 
much shouting had brought Grettir and Illugi to 
the edge of the rock, Thorbjorn again renewed his 
offer, saying further that if there were now but few 
sheep left upon the island, he would add a bag of 
silver pennies to make the difference good. 

“Bootless be your quest,” answered Grettir. 
“Wot this well. What I have said, I have said. 
My bones shall rot upon Drangey ere I set foot on 
other soil.” 

But at his words the carline, who till now had 
sat huddled in rags and warps in the bow of the 
boat, stirred herself and screamed out: 

“An ill word for a fair offer. The wits are out 
of these men that they may not know the face of 
their good fortune, and upon an evil time have 
they put their weal from them. Now this I cast 
over thee, Grettir; that thou be left of all health 
and good-hap, all good heed and wisdom, and that 
the longer ye live the less shall be thy luck. Good 
hope have I, Grettir, that thy days of gladness shall 
be fewer in time to come than in time gone by.” 

And at the words behold, Grettir the Strong, 
whose might no two men could master, staggered as 
though struck, and then a rage came upon him, and 
[250] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


plucking up a stone from the earth, he flung it at 
the heap of rags in the boat, so that it fell upon 
the hag’s leg and brake it. 

“An evil deed, brother,” said Illugi. “Surely 
no good will come of that.” 

“Nor none from the words of that hell-cat yon- 
der,” answered Grettir. “Not over-much were-gild 
were paid for us, though the price should be one 
carline’s life.” 

The Hook sailed back to the mainland after this, 
and sat at home while the leg of his foster-mother 
mended. But when she was able to walk again, 
she bade him lead her forth upon the shore. For 
a time she hobbled up and down till she had found 
a piece of driftwood to her liking. She turned it 
over, now upon this side, now upon that, mumbling 
to herself the while, till The Hook, puzzled, said: 

“What work ye there, foster-mother?” 

“The bane of Grettir,” answered the witch, and 
with that she crouched herself down by the log and 
cut runes upon it. Then she stood upright and 
walked backwards about the log, and went widder- 
shins around it, and then, after carving more runes, 
bade Thorbjorn cast it into the sea. 

The Hook scoffed and jeered, but, mindful of his 

[251 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


oath, set the log adrift. Now the flood tide made 
strongly at the time, and the wind set from off the 
ocean. 

“It will come to shore,” he said. 

“Ay, that I hope,” said the witch; “to the shore 
of Drangey.” 

On the beaches, where the torn scum and froth 
of the waves shuddered and tumbled to and fro in 
the wind, The Hook and the old witch stood watch- 
ing. Thrice the surf flung the log landward, thrice 
the undertow sucked it back. It was carried under 
the curve of a great hissing comber, disappeared, 
then rose dripping on the far side. The hag, bent 
upon her crutch, her toothless jaws fumbling and 
working, her gray hair streaming in the wind, fixed 
a glittering eye, malevolent, iniquitous, far out to 
sea where Drangey showed itself, a block of misty 
blue over the horizon’s edge. 

“A strong spell for a strong man,” she muttered, 
“and an ill curse for an evil deed. Blighted be the 
breasts that sucked ye, and black and bitter the 
bread ye eat. Look thou now, foster-son,” she 
cried, raising her voice. 

The Hook crossed himself, and his head 
crouched fearfully between his shoulders. Under 
[252] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


his bent brows the glance of him shot uneasily 
from side to side. 

“A bad business,” he whispered, and he trembled 
as he spoke. For the log was riding the waves like 
a skiff, headed seawards, making way against tide 
and wind, veering now east, now west, but in the 
main working steadily toward Drangey. “A bad 
business, and peril of thy life is toward if the deed 
thou hast done this day be told of at Thingvalla.” 


[253] 


IV 


THE NIGHT-FLITTING OF THORBJORN HOOK 

By candle-lighting time that day the storm 
had reached such a pitch and so mighty was 
the fury and noise raging across the top of 
Drangey, that Grettir and Illugi must needs put 
their lips to one another’s ears when they spoke. 
There was no rain as yet, and the wind that held 
straight as an arrow’s flight over the ocean, had 
blown away all mists and clouds, so that the atmos- 
phere was of an ominous clearness, and the coasts 
of Iceland showed livid white against the purple 
black of the sky. 

There were strange sounds about : the prolonged 
alarums of the gale; blast trumpeting to blast all 
through the hollow upper spaces of the air; the 
metallic slithering of the frozen grasses, writhing 
and tormented; the minute whistle of driving sand; 
the majestic diapason of the breakers, and the wild 
piping of bewildered sea-mews and black swans, 
as, helpless in the sudden gusts, they drove past, 
close overhead with slanted wings stretched tense 
and taut. 


[254] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


Towards evening Grettir and Illugi regained the 
hut, their bodies bent and inclined against the wind. 
They bore between them the carcass of a slaugh- 
tered sheep, the last on the island, for by now they 
had killed and eaten all of the herd, with the ex- 
ception of one old ram, whom they had spared 
because of his tameness. This one followed the 
brothers about like a dog, and each night came to 
the door of the hut and butted against it till he was 
allowed to come in. 

Earlier in the day Grettir, foreseeing that the 
weather would be hard, had sent Noise, the ser- 
vant, to gather in a greater supply of drift. The 
thrall now met the brothers at the door of the hut, 
staggering under the weight of a great log. He 
threw his burden down at Grettir’ s feet and spoke 
surlily, for he was but little pleased with his lot: 

“There be that which I hold will warm you 
enough. Hew it now yourself, for I am spent with 
the toil of getting it in on such a night as this.” 

But as Grettir heaved up the axe, Illugi sprang 
forward with a hand outstretched and a warning 
cry. He had glanced at the balk of drift, and 
had seen it to be one that Grettir had twice dis- 
carded, suspicious of the runes that he saw were 
cut into it. Even Noise had been warned and for- 
[ 255 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


bidden to bring it to the hut. Doubtless on this 
day the thrall had found it close by the foot of the 
ladder, and being too slothful and too ill-tempered 
to seek farther, had fetched it in despite of Grettir’ s 
commands. 

“Brother,” cried Illugi, “have a heed what ye 
do!” 

But he spoke too late. Grettir hewed strong 
upon the balk, and the axe flipped from it and 
drave into his leg below the knee, so that the blade 
hung in the bone. Grettir flung down the axe, and 
staggered into the hut and sank upon the bed. 

“Ill-luck is to us-ward,” he cried, “and now wot 
I well that my death is upon me. For no good 
thing was this drift-timber sent thrice to us. Noise, 
evilly hast thou done, and ill hast thou served us. 
Go now and draw the ladder, and let thy faithful 
service henceforth make good the ill-turn thou hast 
done me to-day.” And with the words the brothers 
drove him out into the night. 

Grumbling, the thrall made his way to the lad- 
der-head, and sat down cursing. 

“A fine life,” he muttered, “hounded like a 
house-carle from dawn to dark. Because the son 
of Asmund swings awkwardly his axe and notches 
the skin of him, I must be driven from house and 
[256] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


hearthstone on so hard a night as this. Draw the 
ladder! Ay, draw the ladder, says he. By God! 
it were no man’s deed to risk whether he could win 
to the island in such a storm as this.” 

For all that, he made at least one attempt to 
draw the ladder up. But it was heavy, and the 
wind, thrashing it to and fro, made it hard to 
manage. Noise soon gave over, and, out of spite 
refusing to return to the hut, drew his cloak over 
his head, and crawling in behind a bowlder ad- 
dressed himself to sleep. He was awakened by a 
blow. 

He sprang up. The night was overcast; it had 
been raining; his cloak was drenched. Men were 
there; dark figures crowding together, whispering. 
There was a click and clash of steel, and against 
the pale blur of the sky he saw, silhouetted, the 
moving head of a spear. Again some one struck 
him. He wrenched about terrified, and a score of 
hands gripped him close, while at his throat sprang 
the clutch of fingers iron-strong. Then a voice: 

“Fool, and son of a fool, and worse than a fool ! 
It is I, Thorbjorn, called The Hook. Speak as he 
should speak who is nigh to death, true words and 
few words. What of Grettir ?” 

[ 257 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“Sore bestead,” Noise made shift to answer, 
through the grip upon his throat. “Crippled with 
his own axe as he hewed upon a log of firewood but 
this very day. Down upon his back he is, and none 
to stand at his side, when the need is on him, but 
the boy Illugi.” 

“A log, say you?” whispered The Hook. Then 
turning to a comrade: “Mark you that, Hialfi 
Thinbeard.” 

“A log cut with runes,” insisted Noise. 

“Ay, with runes,” repeated The Hook. “With 
runes, I say, Hialfi Thinbeard. My mind misgave 
me when the carline urged this flitting to-night, and 
only for my oath’s sake I would have foregone it. 
But an old she-goat knows the shortest path to the 
byre. As for you” — he turned to Noise: “Grettir 
is mine enemy, and the feud of blood lies between 
us, but he deserves a better thrall than so foul a 
bird as thou.” 

Thereat he gave the word, and his carles set 
upon Noise and beat him till no breath was left in 
his body. Then they bound him hand and foot, 
and dragged him behind a rock, and left him. 

Noise watched them as they drew to one side and 
whispered together. There were at least twenty of 
them. For a long moment they conferred together 
[258] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


in low voices, while the wind shrilled fiercely in the 
cluster of their spear-blades. Then there was a 
movement. The group broke up. Silently and 
with cautious steps the dark figures of the men 
moved off in the direction of the hut. Twice, as 
The Hook gave the word, they halted to listen. 
Then they moved on again. They disappeared. A 
pebble clicked under foot, a sword struck faintly 
against a rock. 

There was no more sound. The rain urged by 
the wind held steadily across the top of the Island 
of Drangey. It wanted about three hours till 
dawn. 


[259] 


V 


OF THE MAN-SLAYING ON DRANGEY 

In the hut, his head upon his brother’s lap, 
Grettir lay tossing with pain. From the thigh 
down the leg was useless, and from the thigh 
down it throbbed with anguish, yet the Outlaw gave 
no sign of his sufferings, and even to speed the 
slow passing of the night had sung aloud. 

It was a song of the old days, when all men were 
friendly to him, when he was known as Grettir 
Asmundson and not Grettir the Outlaw ; and as he 
sang, his mind went back through the years of all 
that wild, troubled life of his, and he remembered 
many things. Back again in the old home at Biarg, 
free and happy once more he saw himself as he 
should have been, head of his mother’s household, 
his foot upon his own hearthstone, his head under 
his own rooftree. And there should be no more 
foes to fight, and no more hiding and night-riding; 
no noontime danger to be faced down ; no enemies 
that struck in the dark to be baffled. And he 
would be free again; he would be among his fel- 
lows; he would touch the hand of friends, would 
[260] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 

know the companionship of brave and honest men 
and the love of good and honest women. Would it 
all be his again some day? Would the old, old 
times come back again? Would there ever be a 
home-coming for him? Fighter though he was, a 
hero and a warrior, and though battles and man- 
slayings more than he could count had been his 
portion, even though the shock of swords was music 
to him, there were other things that made life glad. 
The hand the sword-hilt had calloused could yet 
remember the touch of a maiden’s fingers, and at 
times, such as this, strange thoughts grew with a 
strange murmuring in his brain. He was a young 
man yet; could he but make head against his ene- 
mies and his untoward fortune till the sentence of 
outlawry was overpassed, he might yet begin his 
life all new again. A wife should be his, and a son 
should be born to him — a little son to watch at play, 
to love, to cherish, to boast of, to be proud of, to 
laugh over, to weep over, to be held against that 
mighty breast of his, to be enfolded ever so gently 
in those mighty sword-scarred arms of his. Strange 
thoughts; strange, indeed, for a wounded outlaw, 
on that storm-swept, barren rock in the dark, dark 

hours before the dawn. 

[261 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“I think,” said Grettir after a while, “that now I 
may sleep a little.” 

Illugi made him comfortable upon the sheep- 
pelts, and put his rolled-up cloak under his head; 
then, when Grettir had closed his eyes, put a new 
log upon the fire and sat down nigh at hand. 

Long time the lad sat thus watching his brother’s 
face as sleep smoothed from it the lines of pain; as 
the lips under the long, blond mustaches relaxed a 
little, and the frown went from the forehead. 

It was a kindly face, after all; none of the 
harshness in it, none of the fierceness in it that so 
bitter a life as his should have stamped it with — a 
kindly face, serious, grave even, the face of a big- 
hearted, generous fellow who bore no malice, who 
feared no evil, who uttered no complaint, and who 
looked fate fearless between the eyes. 

Something shocked heavily at the door of the 
hut, and the Outlaw stirred uneasily, and his blue 
eyes opened a little. 

“It is only the old ram, brother,” said Illugi. 
“He butts hard to get in.” 

“Hard and over hard,” muttered Grettir, and as 
he spoke the door split in twain, and the firelight 
flashed upon the face of Thorbjorn Hook. 

Instantly Illugi was on his feet, his spear in 
[262] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


hand. It had come at last, the end of everything. 
Fate at last was knocking at the door. Grettir was 
to fight the Last Fight there in that narrow hut, 
there on that night of storm, in the rain and under 
the scudding clouds. 

Behind him, as he stood facing the riven door 
and the men that were crowding into the doorway, 
he heard Grettir struggling to his feet. The fire 
flared and smoked in the wind, and the rain, as it 
swept in from without, hissed as it fell among the 
hot embers. From far down on the beaches came 
the booming of the surf. 

The onset hung poised. After that first splinter- 
ing of the door The Hook and his men made no 
move. No man spoke. Illugi, his spear held 
ready, was a statue in the midst of the hut; Grettir, 
upon one knee, with his great sword in his fist, one 
hand holding by Illugi’s belt, did not move. His 
eyes, steady, earnest, were upon those of The 
Hook, and the two men held each other’s glances 
for a moment that seemed immeasurably long. 
Then at last: 

“Who showed thee the way hither?” said Grettir 
quietly. 

“God showed us the way,” The Hook made 


answer. 


[263] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


“Nay, nay, it was the hag, thy foster-mother.” 

But the sound of voices broke the spell. In an 
instant the great fight — the fight that would be told 
of in Iceland for hundreds of years to come — burst 
suddenly forth like the bursting of a dyke. Illugi 
had leaped forward, and through the smoke of the 
weltering fire his spear-blade flashed, curving like 
the curving leap of a salmon in the rapids of the 
Jokulsa. There was a cry, a rush of many feet, 
a parting of the group in the doorway, and Hialfi 
Thinbeard’s hands shut their death-grip upon the 
shaft of Illugi’s spear as the blade of it tore out 
between his shoulders. 

But now men were upon the roof — Karr, son of 
Karr, thrall of Tongue-stone, Vikaar and Haldarr 
of the household of Eirik of Good-dale, Hafr of 
Meadness in the Fleets and Thorwald of Hegra- 
ness — tearing away the thatch and thrusting madly 
downward with sword and spear. Illugi dropped 
the haft of the weapon that had slain Hialfi, and 
catching up another one, made as if to drive it 
through the hatch. But even as he did so the whole 
roof cracked and sagged; then it gave way at one 
corner, and Karr, son of Karr, fell headlong from 
above. Grettir caught him on his sword-point as 
he fell, and at the same moment The Hook drave 
[264] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


a small boar-spear clean through Illugi’s head. 

And from that moment all semblance of consecu- 
tive action was lost. Yelling, shouting, groaning, 
cursing, the men rushed together in one blurred 
and furious grapple. The wrecked hut collapsed, 
crashing upon their heads; the fire, kicked and 
trampled as the fight raged back and forth, caught 
the thatch and sheep-pelts, and flamed up fiercely in 
and around the combat. They fought literally in 
fire — in fire and thick smoke and driving rain. The 
arms that thrust with spear or hewed with sword 
rose and fell all ablaze. Those who fell, fell among 
hot coals and fought their fellows — their own 
friends — to make way that they might escape the 
torment. 

Twice Grettir, dying though he was, flung the 
fight from him and rose to his full height, a dread- 
ful figure, alone for an instant, bloody, dripping, 
charred with ashes, half naked, his clothes all burn- 
ing ; and twice again they flung themselves upon him, 
and bore him down, so that he disappeared beneath 
their mass. And ever and again from out the swirl 
of the onset, from that unspeakable jam of men, 
mad with the battle-madness that was upon them, 
crawled out some horrid figure, staggering, gashed, 
and maimed, or even dying, done to death by the 
[265] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

great Outlaw in the last fight of his life. Thorfin, 
Gamli’s man, had both arms broken at the very 
shoulders; Krolf of Drontheim reeled back from 
the battle with a sword-thrust through his hip that 
made him go on crutches the rest of his life; Kol- 
bein, churl of Svein, died two days later of a spear- 
thrust through the bowels; Ognund, Hakon’s son, 
never was able to use his right arm after that night. 

Hardly a man of all the twenty that did not 
for all the rest of his life bear upon his body the 
marks of Grettir’s death-fight. Still Grettir bore 
up. He had with one arm caught Thorir, The 
Hook’s stoutest house-carle, around the throat, 
while his other arm, that wielded his sword, hewed 
and hewed and smote and thrust as though it would 
never tire. Even above the din of the others rose 
the clamour of Thorir’s agony. Once again Grettir 
cleared a space around him, and stood with drip- 
ping sword, his left arm still crushing Thorir in 
that awful embrace. Thorir was weaponless, his 
face purple. No thought of battle was left in him, 
and frantic, he stretched out a hand to his fellows, 
his voice a wail : 

“Help me, Thorbjom. He is killing me. For 
Christ’s sake ” 


[266] 


GRETTIR AT DRANGEY 


And Grettir’ s blade nailed the words within his 
throat. The wretch slid to the ground doubled in 
a heap, the blood gushing from his mouth. 

Then those that yet remained alive, drawn off a 
little, panting, spent, saw a terrible sight — the 
death of Grettir. 

For a moment in that flicker of fire he seemed 
to grow larger. Alone, unassailable, erect among 
those heaps of dead and dying enemies, his stature 
seemed as it were suddenly to increase. He tow- 
ered above them, his head in swirls of smoke, the 
great bare shoulders gleaming with his blood, the 
long braids of yellow hair soaked with it. Awful, 
gigantic, suddenly a demi-god, he stood colossal, 
a man made more than human. The eyes of him 
fixed, wide open, looked out into the darkness 
above their heads, unwinking, unafraid — looked 
into the darkness and into the eyes of Death, un- 
afraid, unshaken. 

There he stood already dead, yet still upon his 
feet, rigid as iron, his back unbent, his neck proud; 
while they cowered before him holding their 
breaths waiting, watching. Then, like a mighty 
pine tree, stiff, unbending, he swayed slowly for- 
ward. Stiff as a sword-blade the great body leaned 
over farther and farther ; slowly at first, then with 
[267] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


increased momentum inclined swiftly earthward. 
He fell, and they could believe that the crash 
of that fall shook the earth beneath their 
feet. He died as he would have wished to die, in 
battle, his harness on, his sword in his grip. He 
lay face downward amid the dead ashes of the 
trampled fire and moved no more. 


[268] 


The Guest of Honour 










/ 










































The Guest of Honour 


PART ONE 


T HE doctor shut and locked his desk drawer 
upon his memorandum book with his right 
hand, and extended the left to his friend 
Manning Verrill, with the remark: 

“Well, Manning, how are you?” 

“If I were well, Henry,” answered Verrill 
gravely, “I would not be here.” 

The doctor leaned back in his deep leather chair, 
and having carefully adjusted his glasses, tilted 
back his head, and looked at Verrill from beneath 
them. He waited for him to continue. 

“It’s my nerves' — I suppose ” began Verrill. 
“Henry,” he declared suddenly leaning forward, 
“Henry, I’m scared; that’s what’s the matter with 
me — I’m scared.” 

“Scared,” echoed the doctor, “What nonsense! 
What of?” 


[271 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


‘‘Scared of death, Henry,” broke out Verrill, 
“scared blue!” 

“It is your nerves,” murmured the doctor. “You 
need travel and a bromide, my boy. There’s noth- 
ing the matter with you. Why, you’re good for 
another forty years, — yes, or even for another fifty 
years. You’re sound as a nut. You, to talk about 
death!” 

“I’ve seen thirty — twenty-nine I should say, 
twenty-nine of my best friends go.” 

The doctor looked puzzled a moment; then 
— “Oh ! you mean that club of yours,” said he. 

“Yes,” said Verrill, “Great heavens! to think 
that I should be the last man after all — well, one 
of us had to be the last. And that’s where the 
trouble is, Henry. It’s been growing on me for 
the last two years — ever since Curtice died. He 
was the twenty-sixth. And he died only a month 
before the Annual Dinner. Arnold, Brill, Steve, — 
Steve Sharrett, you know, and I — just the four, — 
were left then; and we sat down to that big table 
alone; and when we came to the toast of ‘The 
Absent Ones’ . . . Well, Henry, we were pretty 
solemn before we got through. And we knew that 
the choice of the last man, — who would face those 
[272] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


thirty-one empty covers and open the bottle of 
wine that we all set aside at our first dinner, and 
drink ‘The Absent Ones,’ — was narrowing down 
pretty fine. 

“Next year there were only Arnold and Steve, 
and myself left. Brill — well you know all about his 
death. The three of us got through dinner some- 
how. The year after that we were still three, and 
even the year after that. Then poor old Steve 
went down with the Dreibund in the bay of Biscay, 
and four months afterward Arnold and I sat down 
to the table at the Annual, alone. I’m not going 
to forget that evening in a hurry. Why, Henry — 
oh ! never mind. Then — ” 

“Well,” prompted the doctor as his friend 
paused: 

“Arnold died three months ago. And the day 
of our Annual — I mean my — the club’s,” Verrill 
changed his position. “The date of the dinner, 
the Annual Dinner, is next month, and I’m the only 
one left.” 

“And, of course, you’ll not go,” declared the 
doctor. 

“Oh, yes,” said Verrill. “Yes, I will go, of 
course. But — ” He shook his head with a long 
sigh. “When the Last Man Club was organised,” 

[273] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


he went on, “in ’68, we were all more or less 
young. It was a great idea, at least I felt that way 
about it, but I didn’t believe that thirty young men 
would persist in anything — of that sort very long. 
But no member of the club died for the first five 
years, and the club met every year and had its 
dinner without much thought of — of consequences, 
and of the inevitable. We met just to be sociable.” 

“Hold on,” interrupted the doctor, “you are 
speaking now of thirty. A while ago you said 
thirty-one.” 

“Yes, I know,” assented Verrill, “There were 
thirty in the club, but we always placed an extra 
cover — for — for the Guest of Honour.” 

The doctor made a movement of impatience: 
Then in a moment, “Well,” he said, resignedly, 
“go on.” 

“That’s about the essentials,” answered Verrill. 
“The first death was in ’73. And from that year 
on the vacant places at the table have steadily 
increased. Little by little the original bravado of 
the thing dropped out of it all for me ; and of late 
years — well I have told you how it is. I’ve seen 
so many of them die, and die so fast, so regularly — 
one a year you might say, — that I’ve kept saying 
‘who next, who next, who’s to go this year?’ . , , 

[274] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


And as they went, one by one, and still I was 
left ... I tell you, Henry, the suspense was, . . . 
the suspense is . . . You see I’m the last now, and 
ever since Curtice died, I’ve felt this thing weighing 
on me. By God > Henry } Tm afraid; I’m afraid 
of Death! It’s horrible! It’s as though I were 
on the list of ‘condemned’ and were listening to 
hear my name called every minute.” 

“Well, so are all of us, if you come to that,” 
observed the doctor. 

“Oh, I know, I know,” cried Verrill, “it is mor- 
bid and all that. But that don’t help me any. 
Can you imagine me one month from to-morrow 
night. Think now. I’m alone, absolutely, and 
there is the long empty table, with the thirty places 
set, and the extra place, and those places are where 
all my old friends used to sit. And at twelve 
I get up and give first ‘The Absent Ones,’ and then 
‘The Guest of the Evening.’ I gave those toasts 
last year, but there were two of us, then, and 
the year before there were three. But ever since 
Curtice died and we were narrowed down to four, 
this thing has been weighing on me — this idea of 
death, and I’ve conceived a horror of it — a — a 
dread. And now I am the last. I had no idea 

[275] 


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this would ever happen to me; or if it did, that it 
would be like this. I’m shaken, Henry, shaken. 
I’ve not slept for three nights. So I’ve come to 
you. You must help me.” 

“So I will, by advising you. You give up the 
idiocy. Cut out the dinner this year; yes, and for 
always.” 

“You don’t understand,” replied Verrill, calmly. 
“It is impossible. I could not keep away. I must 
be there.” 

“But it’s simple lunacy,” expostulated the doctor. 
“Man, you’ve worked upon your nerves over this 
fool club and dinner, till I won’t be responsible for 
you if you carry out this notion. Come, promise 
me you will take the train for, say Florida, to- 
morrow, and Til give you stuff that will make you 
sleep. St. Augustine is heaven at this time of year, 
and I hear the tarpon have come in. Shall — ” 

Verrill shook his head. 

“You don’t understand,” he repeated. “You 
simply don’t understand. No, I shall go to the 
dinner. But of course I’m — I’m nervous — a little. 
Did I say I was scared? I didn’t mean that. Oh, 
I’m all right; I just want you to prescribe for me, 
something for the nerves. Henry, death is a ter- 
rible thing, — to see ’em all struck down, twenty- 
[276] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 

nine of ’em — splendid boys. Henry, I’m not a 
coward. There’s a difference between cowardice 
and fear. For hours last night I was trying to 
work it out. Cowardice — that’s just turning tail 
and running; but I shall go through that Annual 
Dinner, and that’s ordeal enough, believe me. But 
fear, — it’s just death in the abstract that unmans 
me. Thafs the thing to fear. To think that 
we all go along living and working and fussing 
from day to day, when we know that this great 
Monster, this Horror, is walking up and down the 
streets, and that sooner or later he’ll catch us, — 
that we can’t escape. Isn’t it the greatest curse in 
the world! We’re so used to it we don’t realise 
the Thing. But suppose one could eliminate the 
Monster altogether. Then we’d realise how sweet 
life was, and we’d look back at the old days with 
horror — just as I do now.” 

“Oh, but this is rubbish,” cried the doctor, “sim- 
ple drivel. Manning, I’m ashamed of you. I’ll 
prescribe for you, I suppose I’ve got to. But a 
good rough fishing-and-hunting-trip would do more 
for you than a gallon of drugs. If you won’t go 
to Florida, get out of town, if it’s only over Sunday. 
Here’s your prescription, and do take a Friday-to- 
[ 277 ] 


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Monday trip. Tramp in the woods, get tired, and 
don’t go to that dinner!” 

“You don’t understand,” repeated Verrill, as the 
two stood up. He put the prescription into his 
pocket-book. “You don’t understand. I couldn’t 
keep away. It’s a duty, and besides — well I 
couldn’t make you see. Good-by. This stuff will 
make me sleep, eh? And do my nerves good, too, 
you say? I see. I’ll come back to you if it don’t 
work. Good-by again. This door, is it? Not 
through the waiting-room, eh? Yes, I remember. 

. . . Henry, did you ever — did you ever face 
death yourself — I mean — ” 

“Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,” cried the doc- 
tor. But Verrill persisted. His back to the closed 
door, he continued: 

"l did. I faced death once, — so you see I should 
know. It was when I was a lad of twenty. My 
father had a line of New Orleans packets and I 
often used to make the trip as super-cargo. One 
October day we were caught in the equinox off Hat- 
teras, and before we knew it we were wondering if 
she would last another half-hour. Along in the 
afternoon there came a sea aboard, and caught me 
unawares. I lost my hold and felt myself going, 
going. ... I was sure for ten seconds that it was 
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the end , — and I saw death then , face to face! 

“And I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve only to shut 
my eyes to see it all, hear it all — the naked spars 
rocking against the grey-blue of the sky, the wrench 
and creak of the ship, the threshing of rope ends, 
the wilderness of pale-green water, the sound of 
rain and scud. ... No, no, I’ll not forget it. 
And death was a horrid specter in that glimpse I 
got of him. I — I don’t care to see him again. 
Well, good-by once more.” 

“Good-by, Manning, and believe me, this is all 
hypochondria. Go and catch fish. Go shoot some- 
thing, and in twenty-four hours you’ll believe 
there’s no such thing as death.” 

The door closed. Verrill was gone. 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


PART TWO 

The banquet hall was in the top story of one of 
the loftiest sky-scrapers of the city. Along the 
eastern wall was a row of windows reaching from 
ceiling to floor, and as the extreme height of the 
building made it unnecessary to draw the curtains 
whoever was at the table could look out and over 
the entire city in that direction. Thus it was that 
Manning Verrill, on a certain night some four 
weeks after his interview with the doctor, sat there 
at his walnuts and black coffee and, absorbed, 
abstracted, looked out over the panorama beneath 
him, where the Life of a great nation centered and 
throbbed. 

To the unenlightened the hall would have pre- 
sented a strange spectacle. Down its center ex- 
tended the long table. The chairs were drawn up, 
the covers laid. But the chairs were empty, the 
covers untouched; and but for the presence of the 
one man the hall was empty, deserted. 

At the head of the table Verrill, in evening dress, 
a gardenia in his lapel, his napkin across his lap, 
an unlighted cigar in his fingers, sat motionless, 
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THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


looking out over the city with unseeing eyes. Of 
thirty places around the table, none was distinctive, 
none varied. But at Verrill’s right hand the thirty- 
first place, the place of honour, differed from all 
the rest. The chair was large, massive. The oak 
of which it was made was black, while instead of 
the usual array of silver and porcelain, one saw 
but two vessels, — an unopened bottle of wine and a 
large silver cup heavily chased. 

From far below in the city’s streets eleven o’clock 
struck. The sounds broke in upon Verrill’s reverie 
and he stirred, glanced about the room and then, 
rising, went to the window and stood there for 
some time looking out. 

At his feet, far beneath lay the city, twinkling 
with lights. In the business quarter all was dark, 
but from the district of theatres and restaurants 
there arose a glare into the night, ruddy, vibrating, 
with here and there a ganglia of electric bulbs upon 
a “fire sign” emphasising itself in a whiter radi- 
ance. Cable-cars and cabs threaded the streets with 
little starring eyes of coloured lights, while under- 
neath all this blur of illumination, the people, de- 
bouching from the theatres, filled the sidewalks 
with tiny ant-like swarms, minute, bustling. 

Father on in the residence district, occasional 
[281] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


lighted windows watched with the street-lamps 
gazing blankly into the darkness. In particular one 
house was all ablaze. Every window glowed. No 
doubt a great festivity was in progress and Verrill 
could almost fancy that he heard the strains of the 
music, the rustle of the silks. 

Then nearer at hand, but more to the eastward, 
where the office buildings rose in tower-like clusters 
and somber groups, Verrill could see a vista of open 
water — the harbour. Lights were moving here, 
green and red, as the great hoarse-voiced freighters 
stood out with the tide. 

And beyond this was the sea itself, and more 
lights, very, very faint where the ships rolled 
leisurely in the ground swells; ships bound to and 
from all ports of the earth, — ships that united the 
nations, that brought the whole world of living 
men under the view of the lonely watcher in the 
empty Banquet Hall. 

Verrill raised the window. At once a subdued 
murmur, prolonged, monotonous, — the same mur- 
mur as that which disengages itself from forests, 
from the sea, and from sleeping armies, — rose to 
meet him. It was the mingling of all the night 
noises into one great note that came simultaneously 
from all quarters of the horizon, -infinitely vast, 
[282] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


infinitely deep, — a steady diapason strain like the 
undermost bourdon of a great organ as the wind 
begins to thrill the pipes. 

It was the stir of life, the breathing of the 
Colossus, the push of the nethermost basic force, 
old as the world, wide as the world, the murmur 
of the primeval energy, coeval with the centuries, 
blood-brother to that spirit which in the brooding 
darkness before creation, moved upon the face of 
the waters. 

And besides this, as Verrill stood there looking 
out, the night wind brought to him, along with the 
taint of the sea, the odour of the heaped-up fruit 
in the city’s markets and even the suggestion of the 
vegetable gardens in the suburbs. 

Across his face, like the passing of a long breath, 
he felt the abrupt sensation of life, indestructible, 
persistent. 

But absorbed in other things, Verrill, unmoved, 
and only dimly comprehending, closed the window 
and turned back into the room. At his place stood 
an unopened bottle and a glass as yet dry. He 
removed the foil from the neck of the bottle, but 
after looking at his watch, set it down again with- 
out drawing the cork. It lacked some fifteen min- 
utes to midnight. 


[283] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


Once again, as he had already done so many 
times that evening, Verrill wiped the moisture from 
his forehead. He shut his teeth against the slow 
thick labouring of his heart. He was alone. The 
sense of isolation, of abandonment, weighed down 
upon him intolerably as he looked up and down the 
the empty table. Alone, alone; all the rest were 
gone, and he stood there, in the solitude of that 
midnight; he, last of all that company whom he 
had known and loved. Over and over again he 
muttered: 

“All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.” Then 
slowly Verrill began to make the circuit of the 
table, reading, as if from a roll call, the names 
written on the cards which lay upon the place- 
plates. “Anderson, . . . Evans, . . . Copeland, 
— dear old ‘crooked-face’ Copeland, his camp com- 
panion in those Maine fishing-trips of the old days, 
dead now these ten years. . . . Stryker, — ‘Buff’ 
Stryker they had called him, dead, — he had for- 
gotten how long, — drowned in his yacht off the 
Massachusetts coast; Harris, died of typhoid some- 
where in Italy; Dick Herndon, killed in a mine ac- 
cident in Mexico; Rice, old ‘Whitey Rice’ a suicide 
in a California cattle town; Curtice, carried off by 
fever in Durban, South Africa.” Thus around the 
[284] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


whole table he moved, telling the bead-roll of 
death, following in the footsteps of the Monster 
who never relented, who never tired, who never, 
never, — never forgot. 

His own turn would come some day. Verrill, 
sunken into his chair, put his hands over his eyes. 
.Yes his own turn would come. There was no 
escape. That dreadful face would rise again be- 
fore his eyes. He would bow his back to the 
scourge of nations, he would roll helpless beneath 
the wheels of the great car. How to face that 
prospect with fortitude ! How to look into those 
terrible grey eyes with calm! Oh, the terror of 
that gorgon face, oh, the horror of those sightless, 
lightless grey eyes ! 

But suddenly midnight struck. He heard the 
strokes come booming upward from the city streets. 
His vigil was all but over. 

Verrill opened the bottle of wine, breaking the 
seal that had been affixed to the cork on the night 
of the first meeting of the club. Filling his glass, 
he rose in his place. His eyes swept the table, and 
while for the last time the memories came throng- 
ing back, his lips formed the words: 

“To the Absent Ones: to you, Curtice, Ander- 
son, Brill, to you, Copeland, tc you, Stryker, to 
[285] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


you, Arnold, to you all, my old comrades, all you 
old familiar faces who are absent to-night.” 

He emptied the glass, but immediately filled it 
again. The last toast was to be drunk, the last of 
all. Verrill, the glass raised, straightened himself. 

But even as he stood there, glass in hand, he 
shivered slightly. He made note of it for the mo- 
ment, yet his emotions had so shaken him during 
all that evening that he could well understand the 
little shudder that passed over him for a moment. 

But he caught himself glancing at the windows. 
All were shut. The doors of the hall were closed, 
the flames of the chandeliers were steady. Whence 
came then this certain sense of coolness that so 
suddenly had invaded the air? The coolness was 
not disagreeable, but none the less the tempera- 
ture of the room had been lowered, at least so he 
could fancy. lYet already he was dismissing the 
matter from his mind. No doubt the weather had 
changed suddenly. 

In the next second, however, another peculiar 
circumstance forced itself upon his attention. The 
stillness of the Banquet Hall, placed as it was, at 
the top of one of the highest buildings in the city 
was no matter of comment to Verrill. He was 
long since familiar with it. But for all that, even 
[286] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


through the closed windows, and through the me- 
dium of steel and brick and marble that composed 
the building the indefinite murmur of the city’s 
streets had always made itself felt in the hall. It 
was faint, yet it was distinct. That bourdon of 
life to which he had listened that very evening was 
not wholly to be shut out, yet now, even in this 
supreme moment of the occasion it was impossible 
for Verrill to ignore the fancy that an unusual 
stillness had all at once widened about him, like the 
widening of unseen ripples. There was not a 
sound, and he told himself that stillness such as this 
was only the portion of the deaf. No faintest 
tremor of noise rose from the streets. The vast 
building itself had suddenly grown as soundless as 
the unplumbed depth of the sea. But Verrill shook 
himself; all evening fancies such as these had be- 
seiged him, even now they were prolonging the 
ordeal. Once this last toast drunk and he was 
released from his duty: He raised his glass again, 
and then in a loud clear voice he said: 

“Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the evening ” 
And as he emptied the glass, a quick, light footstep 
sounded in the corridor outside the door. 

Verrill looked up in great annoyance. The 
corridor led to but one place, the door of the Ban- 
[287] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


quet Hall, and any one coming down the corridor 
at so brisk a pace could have but one intention — 
that of entering the hall. Verrill frowned at the 
idea of an intruder. His orders had been of the 
strictest. That a stranger should thrust himself 
upon his company at this of all moments was ex- 
asperating. 

But the footsteps drew nearer, and as Verrill 
stood frowning at the door at the far end of the 
hall, it opened. 

A gentleman came in, closed the door behind 
him, and faced about. Verrill scrutinised him with 
an intent eye. 

He was faultlessly dressed, and just by his man- 
ner of carrying himself in his evening clothes 
Verrill knew that here was breeding, distinction. 
The newcomer was tall, slim. Also he was young; 
Verrill, though he could not have placed his age 
with any degree of accuracy, would none the less 
have disposed of the question by setting him down 
as a young man. But Verrill further observed that 
the gentleman was very pale, even his lips lacked 
colour. However, as he looked closer, he discovered 
that this pallor was hardly the result of any present 
emotion, but was rather constitutional. 

There was a moment’s silence as the two looked 
[288] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


at each other the length of the Hall; then with a 
peculiarly pleasant smile the stranger came forward 
drawing off his white glove and extending his hand. 
He seemed so at home, so perfectly at his ease, and 
at the same time so much of what Verrill was wont 
to call a “thoroughbred fellow” that the latter 
found it impossible to cherish any resentment. He 
preferred to believe that the stranger had made 
some readily explained mistake which would be 
rectified in their first spoken words. Thus it was 
that he was all the more non-plussed when the 
stranger took him by the hand with words: “This 
is Mr. Manning Verrill, of course. I am very glad 
to meet you again, sir. Two such as you and I 
who have once been so intimate, should never for- 
get each other.” 

Verrill had it upon his lips to inform the other 
that he had something the advantage of him; but at 
the last moment he was unable to utter the words. 
The newcomer’s pleasure in the meeting was so 
hearty, so spontaneous, that he could not quite 
bring himself to jeopardise it — at the outset at 
l eas t — by a confession of implied unfriendliness; so 
instead he clumsily assumed the other’s manner, 
and, though deeply perplexed, managed to attain 
a certain heartiness as he exclaimed : “But you have 
[289] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


come very late. I have already dined, and by the 
way, let me explain why you find me here alone, 
in a deserted Banquet Hall with covers laid for so 
many.” 

“Indeed, you need not explain,” replied the 
stranger. “I am a member of your club, you 
know.” 

A member of the club, this total stranger! Ver- 
rill could not hide a frown of renewed perplexity; 
surely this face was not one of any friend he ever 
had. “A charter member, you might say,” the 
other continued; “but singularly enough, I have 
never been able to attend one of the meetings until 
now. Of us all I think I have been the busiest — 
and the one most widely traveled. Such must be 
my excuses.” 

At the moment an explanation occurred to Ver- 
rill. It was within the range of the possible that 
the newcomer was an old member of the club, some 
sojourner in a foreign country, whose death had 
been falsely reported. Possibly Verrill had lost 
track of him. It was not always easy to “place” 
at once every one of the thirty. The two sat down, 
but almost immediately Verrill exclaimed: 

“Pardon me, but — that chair. The omen would 
be so portentous! You have taken the wrong 
[290] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


place. You who are a member of the club! You 
must remember that we reserved that chair — the 
one you are occupying.” 

But the stranger smiled calmly. 

“I defy augury, and I snap my fingers at the 
portent. Here is my place and here I choose to 
remain.” 

“As you will,” answered Verrill, “but it is a 
singular choice. It is not conducive to appetite.” 

“My dear Verrill,” answered the other, “I shall 
not dine, if you will permit me to say so. It is very 
late and my time is limited. I can stay but a 
short while at best. I have much to do to-night 
after I leave you, — much good I hope, much good. 
For which,” he added rather sadly, “I shall re- 
ceive no thanks, only abuse, only abuse, my dear 
Verrill.” Verrill was only half listening. He was 
looking at the other’s face, and as he looked, he 
wondered ; for the brow was of the kind fitted for 
crowns, and from beneath glowed the glance of a 
King. The mouth seemed to have been shaped 
by the utterance of the commands of Empire. 
The whole face was astonishing, full of power 
tempered by a great kindliness. Verrill could not 
keep his gaze from those wonderful, calm grey 
eyes. Who was this extraordinary man met under 
[291 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


such strange circumstances, alone and in the night, 
in the midst of so many dead memories, and sur- 
rounded by that inexplicable stillness, that sudden, 
profound peace? And what was the subtle magne- 
tism that upon sight, drew him so powerfully to 
the stranger? Kingly he was, but Verrill seemed 
to feel that he was more than that He was — 
could be — a friend, such a friend as in all their 
circle of dead companions he had never known. 
In his company he knew he need never be ashamed 
of weakness, human, natural, ordained weakness, 
need not be ashamed because of the certainty of 
being perfectly and thoroughly understood. Thus 
it was that when the stranger had spoken the 
words “ — only abuse, only abuse, my dear Ver- 
rill.” Verrill, starting from his muse, answered 
quickly: “What, abuse, you! in return for good! 
You astonish me.” 

“ ‘Abuse’ is the mildest treatment I dare ex- 
pect; it will no doubt be curses. Of all personages, 
I am the one most cruelly misunderstood. My 
friends are few, few, — oh, so pitiably few.” “Of 
whom may I be one?” exclaimed Verrill. “I 
hope,” said the stranger gravely, “we shall be the 
best of friends. When we met before I am afraid, 
my appearance was too abrupt and — what shall I 
[292] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


say — unpleasant to win your good will.” Verrill 
in some embarrassment, framed a lame reply; but 
the other continued: 

“You do not remember, as I can easily under- 
stand. My manner at that time was against me. 
It was a whim, but I chose to be most forbidding 
on that occasion. I am a very Harlequin in my 
moods; Harlequin did I say, my dear fellow I am 
the Prince of Masqueraders.” 

“But a Prince in all events,” murmured Verrill, 
half to himself. 

“Prince and Slave,” returned the other, “slave 
to circumstance.” 

“Are we not all — ,” began Verrill, but the 
stranger continued: 

“Slave to circumstance, slave to time, slave to 
natural laws, none so abject as I, in my servility. 
When the meanest, the lowest, the very weakest 
calls, I must obey. On the other hand, none so 
despotic as I, none so absolute. When I summon, 
the strongest must respond; when I command, the 
most powerful must obey. My profession, my 
dear Verrill, is an arduous one.” 

“Your profession is, I take it,” observed Verrill, 
“that of a physician.” 

“You may say so,” replied the other, “and you 

[293] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


may also say an efficient one. But I am always 
the last to be summoned. I am a last resource; 
my remedy is a heroic one. But it prevails — in- 
evitably. No pain, my dear Verrill, so sharp that 
I cannot allay, no anguish so great that I cannot 
soothe.” 

“Then perhaps you may prescribe for me,” said 
Verrill. “Of late I have been perturbed. I have 
lived under a certain strain, certain contingencies 
threaten, which, no doubt unreasonably, I have 
come to dread. I am shaken, nervous, fearful. 
My own doctor has been unable to help me. Per- 
haps you — ” 

The stranger had already opened the bottle of 
wine which stood by his plate, and filled the silver 
cup. He handed it to Verrill. , 

“Drink,” he said. 

Verrill hesitated: 

“But this wine,” he protested: “This cup — 
pardon me, it was reserved — ” 

“Drink,” repeated the stranger. “Trust me.” 

He took Verrill’s glass in which he had drunk 
the toasts and which yet contained a little wine. 
He pressed the silver cup into VerriH’s hands. 

“Drink,” he urged for the third time. 

[294] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


Verrill took the cup, and the stranger raised his 
glass. 

“To our better acquaintance,” he said. 

But Verrill, at length at the end of all con- 
jecture, cried out, the cup still in his hand: 

“Your toast is most appropriate, sir. A better 
acquaintance with you, I assure you, would be most 
pleasing to me. But I must ask your pardon for 
my stupidity. Where have we met before? Who 
are you, and what is your name?” 
i The stranger did not immediately reply, but 
fixed his grave grey eyes upon Verriirs. For a 
moment he held his gaze in his own. Then as the 
seconds slipped by, the first indefinite sense of sus- 
picion flashed across Verriirs mind, flashed and 
faded, returned once more, faded again, and left 
him wondering. Then as the stranger said : 

“Do you remember, — it was long ago. Do you 
remember the sight of naked spars rocking against 
a grey torn sky, a ship wrenching and creaking, 
wrestling with the wind, a world of pale green 
surges, the gale singing through the cordage, and 
then as the sea swept the decks — ah, you do re- 
member.” , 

For Verrill had started suddenly, and with the 
movement, full recognition, complete, unequivocal, 

[ 295 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 

gleamed suddenly in his eyes. There was a long 
silence while he returned the gaze of the other, 
now no longer a stranger. At length Verrill spoke, 
drawing a long breath. 

“Ah ... it is you ... at last.” 

“Well !” 

Verrill smiled: 

“It is well, I had imagined it would be so dif- 
ferent, — when you did come. But as it is — ,” he 
extended his hand, “I am very glad to meet you.” 

“Did I not tell you,” said the other, “that of 
all the world, I am the most cruelly misunder- 
stood?” 

“But you confessed to the masquerade.” 

“Oh, blind, blind, not to see behind the foolish 
masque. Come, we have not yet drunk.” 

He placed the cup in VerriH’s hands, and once 
again raised the glass. 

“To our better acquaintance,” he said. 

“To our better acquaintance,” echoed Verrill. 
He drained the cup. 

“The lees were bitter,” he observed. 

“But the effect?” 

“Yes, it is calming — already, exquisitely so. It 
is not — as I have imagined for so long, deadening, 
[296] 


THE GUEST OF HONOUR 


on the contrary, it is invigorating, revivifying. I 
feel born again.” 

The other rose: “Then there is no need,” he 
said, “to stay here any longer. Come, shall we be 
going?” 

“Yes, yes, I am ready,” answered Verrill. 
“Look,” he exclaimed, pointing to the windows.” 
“Look — it is morning.” 

Low in the east, the dawn was rising over the 
city. A new day was coming; the stars were 
paling, the night was over. 

“That is true,” said Verrill’s new friend. “An- 
other day is coming. It is time we went out to 
meet it.” 

They rose and passed down the length of the 
Banquet Hall. He who had called himself the 
great Physician, the Servant of the Humble, the 
Master of Kings, the Prince of Masqueraders, 
held open the door for Verrill to pass. But when 
the man had gone out, the Prince paused a mo- 
ment, and looked back upon the deserted Banquet 
Hall, lit partly by the steady electrics, partly by 
the pale light of morning, that now began with 
ever-increasing radiance to stream through the 
eastern windows. Then he stretched forth his 
hand and laid his touch upon a button in the wall. 

[ 297 ] 


THE THIRD CIRCLE 


Instantly the lights sank, vanished; for a moment 
the hall seemed dark. 

He went out quietly, shutting the door behind 
him. 

****** 

And the Banquet Hall remained deserted, 
lonely, empty, yet it was neither dark nor lifeless. 
Stronger and stronger grew the flood of light that 
burned roseate toward the zenith as the sun came 
up. It penetrated to every corner of the room, and 
the drops of wine left in the bottom of the glasses 
flashed like jewels in the radiance. From without, 
from the city’s streets, came the murmur of in- 
creasing activity. Through the night it had 
droned on, like the low-pitched diapason of some 
vast organ, but now as the sun rose, it swelled in 
volume. Louder it grew and ever louder. Its 
sound-waves beat upon the windows of the hall. 
They invaded the hall itself. 

It was the symphony of energy, the vast or- 
chestration of force, the paean of an indestructible 
life, coeval with the centuries, renascent, ordained, 
eternal. 


[298] 


THE COMPLETE WORKS 

OP 

WILLIAM J. LOCKE 

“Life is a glorious thing.” — W, \ J. Locke 

“ If you wish to be lifted out of the petty cares of to-day, read one 
of Locke’s novels. You may select any from the following titles and 
be certain of meeting some new and delightful friends. His char* 
acters are worth knowing.” — Baltimore Sun. 

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne The Demagogue and Lady Phayre 
At the Gate of Samaria The Beloved Vagabond 

A Study in Shadows The White Dove 

Where Love Is The Usurper 

Derelicts Septimus Idols 

I2mo. Cloth. $ 1.50 each . 

Eleven volumes bound in green cloth. Uniform edition in box. 
$16.50 per set. Half morocco $45.00 net. Express prepaid. 

The Beloved Vagabond 

‘“The Beloved Vagabond* is a gently-written, fascinating tale. 
Make his acquaintance some dreary, rain-soaked evening and find 
the vagabond nerve-thrilling in your own heart.’* 

— Chicago Record-Herald \ 

Septimus 

“Septimus is the joy of the y ear. "—American Magazine • 

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne 

“ A literary event of the first importance.” — Boston Herald . 

“ One of those rare and much-to-be-desired stories which keep one 
divided between an interested impatience to get on, and an irresis- 
tible temptation to linger for full enjoyment by the way.**— Life. 

Where Love Is 

“ A capital story told with skill.” — New York Evening Sun , 

“.One of those unusual novels of which the end is as good as the 
beginning.” — New York Globe. 


WILLIAM J. LOCKE 

The Usurper 

“ Contains the hall-mark of genius itself. The plot is masterly in 
conception, the descriptions are all vivid flashes from a brilliant 
pen. It is impossible to read and not marvel at the skilled work- 
manship and the constant dramatic intensity of the incident, situ- 
ations and climax.” — The Boston Herald '* 

Derelicts 

44 Mr. Locke tells his story in a very true, a very moving, and a 
very noble book. If any one can read the last chapter with dry 
eyes we shall be surprised. ‘ Derelicts * is an impressive, an im- 
portant book. Yvonne is a creation that any artist might be proud 
of.” — The Daily Chronicle * 

Idols 

44 One of the very few distinguished novels of this present book 
season.” — The Daily Mail. 

44 A brilliantly written and eminently readable book.” 

— The London Daily Telegraph* 

A Study in Shadows 

44 Mr. Locke has achieved a distinct success in this novel. He has 
struck many emotional chords, and struck them all with a firm, 
sure hand. In the relations between Katherine and Raine he had 
a delicate problem to handle, and he has handled it delicately.” 

— The Daily Chronicle. 

The White Dove 

44 It is an interesting story. The characters are strongly conceived 
and vividly presented, and the dramatic moments are powerfully 
realized.” — The Morning Post * 

The Demagogue and Lady Phayre 

41 Think of Locke’s clever books. Then think of a book as differ- 
ent from any of these as one can well imagine — that will be Mr. 
Locke’s new book.” — New York World* 

At the Gate of Samaria 

44 William J. Locke’s novels are nothing if not unusual. They are 
marked by a quaint originality. The habitual novel reader inevi- 
tably is grateful for a refreshing sense of escaping the common- 
place path of conclusion.” — Chicago Record- Herald* 


M. P. WILLCOCKS 

The Wingless Victory 

l2mo Cloth $1.50 

“A moving drama of passion, of frailty, of long temptation and 
of ultimate triumph over it .” — Pall Mall Gazette. 

*‘A most remarkable novel which places the author in the first 
rank. This is a novel built to last.” — Outlook. 

** A book worth keeping on the shelves, even by the classics, for it 
is painted in colors which do not fade.” — Times. 
u Fresh and fervent, instinct with genuine passion and emotion 
and all the fierce primitive joys of existence. It is an excellent 
thing for any reader to come across this book.” — Standard* 

“A splendid book.” — Tribune . 

A Man of Genius 

Ornamental cloth 12 mo $1.50 
A powerful love-story. 

Widdicombe : A Romance of the Devonshire Moors 

l2mo $1.50 


THOMAS BAILEY CLEGG 

The Bishop’s Scapegoat 

Ornamental cloth i2mo $1.50 

A romance dealing with the punishment for a crime committed 
many years ago. 

The Wilderness. ismo . $1*50 

“A novel of strong ethical significance, related in a masterly man- 
ner. A story of compelling interest.” 

The Love Child i2mo . $1.50 


JOHN G. NEIHARDT 

The Lonesome Trial 

Illustrated i2mo $1.50 
The West and Frontier Life 
Mr. Neihardt’s stories of the trapper and the Indian are well 
known to the readers of the magazines of the day. They pulsate 
with the spirit of Western life. 

“The most virile and original note since Jack London.” 


THE NEW POCKET LIBRARY 

Uniform Editions . Boxed 

Printed from a clear type upon a specially thin and opaque paper 
manufactured for the series 


Anthony Trollope. 16 volumes in dark olive green cloth 
or leather, boxed. 

Dr. Thorne Barchester Towers The Warden 

Framley Parsonage The Bertrams The Three Clerks 

Castle Richmond Orley Farm (2 vols.) Rachel Ray 

The Macdermots of Ballycloran Can you Forgive Her? (a vols.) 
The Small House at Allington (2 vols.) 

The Kellys and the O’Kellys 

Flexible leather, $ 12.00 net Cloth, $ 8.00 net Express Jo cents 

George Borrow. 5 volumes in dark olive green. 

Lavengro The Romany Rye The Bible in Spain 

The Zincali Wild Wales 

Flexible leather, $j.jo net Cloth, $2.50 net Express 25 cents 

Beaconsfield. A reissue of the Novels of the Earl of 
Beaconsfield. Each with an Introduction by the Earl 
of Iddesleigh. 

Sybil Tancred Venetia Contarini Fleming 

Coningsby Henrietta Temple Vivian Grey 
( The Young Duke ( Alroy 

) The Rise of Iskander J Popanilla 

( The Infernal Marriage ' i Count Alarcos 

[^Ixion in Heaven 

9 volumes in flexible leather , $6.30 net g volumes in cloth, $4.30 net 
Express jo cents 


George Eliot 

Adam Bede The Mill on the Floss Silas Marner 

Scenes of Clerical Life 

4 volumes inflexible leather , $3.00 net 4 volumes in cloth , $2.00 net 
Express 23 cents 


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